This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

A prominent New South Wales Labor MP is set to hand back over $10,000 in donations following evidence given at an anti-corruption inquiry.

The restaurant manager and former political hopeful Jonathan Yee on Monday told the Independent Commission Against Corruption he arranged for a series of cheques to be issued for the benefit of the Kogarah MP, Chris Minns, in February 2015.

But Yee and nine other apparent donors wrote the $900 cheques in the knowledge they would be reimbursed in cash via the Labor backbencher Ernest Wong soon after, Yee told the inquiry.

NSW Labor forfeits $100,000 allegedly donated by Chinese billionaire in Aldi shopping bag Read more

The cheques were among 12 totalling $10,600 made out to “ALP Chris Minns” and tendered to Icac on Monday.

“Mr Minns will forfeit funds associated with Mr Wong and Mr Yee,” a spokesman for the MP said on Monday.

The inquiry has not heard any evidence that Minns knew the true source of the money.

The inquiry has been investigating the real source of a series of donations totalling $100,000 made in the weeks after a Chinese Friends of Labor dinner, convened by Yee, in March 2015.

It was told the Chinese billionaire Huang Xiangmo took the cash in bundles of $100 notes in an Aldi bag to NSW Labor’s head office in April 2015.

Yee said Wong, the CFL patron, asked him in February 2015 if he had people that could “write a few cheques out” to the Chris Minns ALP account.

“I went to them and said, ‘Can you basically write $900? If you can’t, can you go to the bank to draw a bank cheque?’” Yee said. “I would have handed [the cheques] to Ernest, and Ernest would hand me the cash.”

The former local election candidate said the scheme flew under a $1,000 donation threshold and hid the true source of the money, which Wong did not reveal.

According to Yee, weeks after that episode Wong approached the restaurateur again, wanting up to 10 people to put their name to $5,000 donations.

“He said that he will find the money ... through several people but he didn’t mention who it was,” Yee told the inquiry.

Yee said he was surprised to get an email from NSW Labor head office with the specific names he should use to sign those forms, given most on the list had been involved in the Minns cheque scam.

He eventually signed up himself, his brother, his mother, a friend, the family business and five employees.

Yee said he was not told the true identity of the donor until 2017, a claim the Icac chief commissioner, Peter Hall QC, said “beggars belief” and led to demands that he “tell the truth”, leading the former local election candidate to breathe heavily and pause before telling the inquiry Wong did not specifically name the true donor after the March 2015 dinner.

“But I would assume it would come from [Huang],” he said.

“Previously, Mr Huang has donated to the party and he was one of the biggest donors at that time.”

As a property developer, Huang was banned from donating to NSW political parties and does not appear on the public NSW donation disclosure log going back a decade.

Yee conceded he had co-ordinated with Wong to run interference throughout the NSW electoral commission and Icac’s investigations into the donation scandal, including telling straw donors exactly how to answer specific questions.

But, while admitting he had “most definitely” abused their trust, he denied pressuring or threatening anyone to falsely declare as a major political donor.

Wong, in evidence to the commission in early September, said he had never asked Huang for a donation and the billionaire volunteered to personally deliver a bag of cash raised at the event to Labor head office.

Yee will continue giving evidence on Tuesday.