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Abuse of power at the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development

Report · Corruption and Crime Commission (WA CCC) · Western Australia · Dated

Opinions
3
Report length
55 pages

Official source

Abuse of power at the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development

PDF · 55 pages · 1.7 MB · ccc.wa.gov.au

Summary

The report's own summary: Overview, pages 5 to 13

Generated summary: written by an AI model from the report text and checked against the cited pages.

  • The Corruption and Crime Commission investigated suspected misuse of public money through legal services procurement at the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.

    Report, page 5 · Report, page 7

  • It examined false engagement letters used to authorise payments to an expert and a former chief executive.

    Report, page 6 · Report, page 7

  • The Commission formed serious misconduct opinions about the legal director and the former chief executive’s conduct while a public officer.

    Report, page 54 · Report, page 55

  • The Commission made one recommendation to consider prosecuting the legal director and provided the report to the State Solicitor to consider recovering public money.

    Report, page 55

Opinions 3

Allegations are not findings. A commission's finding or opinion of corrupt conduct or misconduct is not a finding that a person is guilty of a criminal offence, and the commissions say so in their reports.

  1. opinion of serious misconduct

    Opinion

    The Commission has formed an opinion of serious misconduct in respect of Ms Heffernan's actions in preparing the purported engagement letter, backdating it and authorising payments of outstanding invoices from Dr Carr using the letter as authority.

    Report, page 5

  2. opinion of serious misconduct

    Opinion

    The Commission has formed an opinion of serious misconduct in relation to Ms Heffernan's actions in preparing the false purported letter of engagement used to authorise the expenditure of State funds.

    Report, page 7

  3. opinion of serious misconduct

    Opinion

    The Commission has formed an opinion of serious misconduct in respect of Mr Evans during his time as a public officer.

    Report, page 55

Recommendations

No recommendations are reproduced in this record. This does not establish that the report contains none.

Published responses

No published response was found.

Official documents 2

Notes on this record

  • Report type assigned by OPAX from the title; the Commission tags every listing item Report.
  • An opinion that misconduct has occurred is not, and is not to be taken as, a finding or opinion that a person has committed a criminal or disciplinary offence (Corruption, Crime and Misconduct Act 2003, s 217A; s 23 in reports made under the Act as first enacted).

Coverage

This publisher

  • The Commission's website has no copyright or licence page; reports carry the Commission's copyright notice (fair dealing only), so OPAX keeps short verbatim extracts with citations and links the original PDFs.
  • Only the reports listing (/publications/reports) is covered. Annual reports, quarterly reports filed under /quarterly-reports, media releases and news items are not report records.
  • The listing date is the date the Commission's page was created; the record date is the report's cover date or the tabling date stated on the page where one is given, and the listing date only as a fallback.
  • Opinions are extracted only where the Commission states them in a sentence on a single page; opinions in older reports framed differently, or split over a page break, are not extracted (findings not_extracted).
  • No text layer, no OCR: scanned reports have no extracted opinions or recommendations.

Record snapshot: · This record as JSON