Jamie Clements tells Icac his meeting with the Chinese billionaire was to help set up a dinner with Bill Shorten

This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

The former New South Wales Labor boss Jamie Clements has flatly denied he accepted a bag full of cash from the Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo, saying he instead met him to help set up a meal with then opposition leader Bill Shorten, Icac has heard.

Previous evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption has alleged that Huang, a banned donor, brought an Aldi shopping bag full of $100,000 cash to Labor’s Sussex Street headquarters in April 2015 and handed it to Clements.

Icac has heard the illegal donation was covered up using a series of straw, or fake, donors.

But Clements on Thursday denied receiving a bag of cash from Huang, despite prior evidence from the Labor official Kenrick Cheah, who said Clements gave him the bag and asked him to count and process the money.

Huang Xiangmo gave former NSW Labor boss $35,000 to fight harassment allegations, Icac told Read more

“I deny that evidence,” he said. “I deny that on my oath.”

Clements agreed that Huang and an interpreter, Tim Xu, had come to the Sussex Street headquarters on 7 April 2015. Records show $100,000 was deposited in Labor bank accounts two days after Huang’s visit.

But Clements said the purpose of the visit was for Huang to ask that Clements set up a meeting with Shorten.

“[Tim Xu said] ‘Mr Huang would like to meet Bill Shorten. He would like to have a lunch or a dinner with Mr Shorten, and could I facilitate that?’,” Clements recalled.

“And I said ‘yes of course’, and I believe I called Bill Shorten while I was sitting there.”

The meeting between Huang and Shorten occurred several weeks later, the inquiry heard, at Master Ken’s Seafood Restaurant in Sydney.

Clements remembers Shorten sending over glasses of Grange wine to Huang’s staff, while they sat in the tea room.

“Actually Mr Shorten sent some glasses of Grange in for them to drink,” Clements said.

Clements said Huang had wanted Shorten to arrange a meeting between Victorian premier Daniel Andrews and a delegation from China.

Shorten did not end up arranging the meeting with Andrews, and Clements said he ended up arranging it himself.

The inquiry has heard that Huang gave large amounts of cash to Clements as personal gifts.

Clements said the Chinese billionaire gave him $35,000 cash, stored in a wine box, to pay for legal bills in 2016. Huang is also said to have employed Clements after he resigned as the NSW Labor general secretary, putting him on a retainer of $4,000 a week for three years, an amount totalling more than $600,000.

Huang also gave Clements $10,000 in an envelope to pass on to an unidentified union official for his campaign in May 2015, the inquiry heard.

In a fiery cross-examination, Labor’s barrister Arthur Moses, SC, accused Clements of seeking out the $10,000 union donation because he knew Huang had given NSW Labor $100,000 and was “good for it”.

Moses suggested the truth was “too awful” for Clements to admit.

“No the reason I’m not admitting to it is because it’s not true.”

Moses also attacked Clements for failing to tell the party of the cash gifts. He said the party had been left blind to Huang’s potential influence on the NSW Labor general secretary.

Moses said that Clements could have been Huang’s “stooge” and the party wouldn’t have known, prompting objections from Clements’ barrister, who described the remark as “personal abuse”. Clements responded: “What’s a stooge?”

Clements later agreed there was a risk the gifts could have left him open to influence. He said he should have declared the money to the party.

“If I was thinking straight at the time [I would have], but I just wasn’t. As I said yesterday I was in all sorts,” he said.

“I honestly thought when I took that money I was not going back to the general secretary.”

Clements said that the first he heard of his alleged association with the $100,000 cash donation was when NSW Labor upper house MP Ernest Wong warned him of a electoral commission investigation in 2017.

Clements choked back tears as he said he was depressed and close to a breakdown, and questioned whether “in some alternate universe, I had forgotten about this”.

He sought out Xu, Huang’s interpreter, who laughed and told him it was a “made up story”.

“Thinking about it here today, in the mental position that I am today, there’s just no way,” he said.

Clements said Wong met with him to talk about the electoral commission and Icac investigations three times. On one occasion, Clements says his mobile phone was sitting on a cafe table between them.

“He pushed the phone aside and I pushed it back in front of me,” Clements said. “That electoral commission investigation has now gone to the Icac and they’re investigating.”

“I just looked at him and gave him a shocked look. He said but it’s all OK it’s just that people paid in cash and everyone’s told the electoral commission that they paid in cash, and that was it.”

Clements said he was first introduced to Huang by former Labor senator Sam Dastyari. Dastyari was the outgoing general secretary of NSW Labor and is said to have repeatedly pressed Clements, his successor, to meet with Huang.

“He repeatedly badgered me to meet him,” Clements said.

On one occasion, Clements had met with Huang for a “quick lunch” at his Mosman residence on the Sunday after the March 2015 fundraising dinner at the centre of the probe. Wong was also there, the inquiry heard.

“I remember talking at the actual lunch, we were drinking Grange,” he said.

Clements remembers trying to convince them on the merits of having French wine with seafood.

The inquiry continues before the chief commissioner Peter Hall.