A 72-year-old Melbourne man was sentenced in the County Court yesterday for creating false accounts to disguise payments made to Malaysian public officials and their associates to facilitate the purchase of his property developments in 2013.
The unnamed man pleaded guilty on October 29, 2024, to one count of false accounting, and was sentenced to 21 months’ suspended imprisonment by the County Court of Victoria.
Federal police commenced an investigation in February 2015 into the man, his associated companies and several Melbourne property developments.
AFP Acting Commander Bernard Geason said the complex investigation reflected the AFP’s commitment to take serious action against transnational financial crime.
“False accounting is not always immediately apparent. Proving that false accounting records were used to hide the true nature of transnational transactions requires persistence and a meticulous approach to investigations and international cooperation,” Acting Cmdr Geason said.
The man acquired three properties around a university campus in Caulfield East and developed them into student hostels through his associated companies.
When the development was completed in 2013, the student hostel was sold to a Malaysian government-owned entity for $22,600,000. The purchase price of the property was inflated from $17,850,000.
During the investigation, the AFP discovered that $4.75 million was paid to entities in Malaysia either linked to Malaysian public officials or to agents acting on their behalf, in return for the officials’ arranging for the Malaysian government-owned entity to purchase the property.
Of those payments, $3.4 million was disguised under false invoices and the AFP charged the man in July 2020.
He pleaded guilty to one count of dishonestly, and to gain for another, falsifying a document made or required for an accounting purpose, by concurring in the making in the document of an entry which was false in a material particular, contrary to section 83(1)(a) of the Crimes Act (Vic).
The AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce (CACT) obtained restraining orders over two real estate properties in Victoria in August 2020, each owned by the offender’s wife and a company in which she is a sole director.
Bank accounts held by the man’s wife and associated companies were also restrained. The total value of all restrained property was about $1.6 million.
“The AFP wishes to thank the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission for its cooperation in this matter,” Acting Cmdr Geason said.
