George Alex tax trial: Two jurors dropped in $13m fraud case
A pair of jurors have been dropped from a marathon multimillion-dollar fraud case, after one was arrested mid-trial for a different alleged crime and officers discovered he had been making covert internet searches relating to the trial he was participating in.
However, NSW Supreme Court judge Desmond Fagan has stopped short of aborting the six month trial of construction boss George Alex and five others accused of pocketing more than $13m in unpaid taxes, instead ordering the remaining jurors to “tell tales on each other” if they become aware of any further misconduct.
The Australian on Wednesday revealed Justice Fagan had adjourned the court for the day after officers arrested the rogue juror, known as Juror G.
At the time, Justice Fagan had been presiding over the matter for 71 days.
When court returned on Thursday morning, Justice Fagan said Juror G had been the subject of an unrelated AFP investigation. As part of that investigation, officers had been monitoring his phone and noted he was making “internet inquiries” in relation to the case.
Justice Fagan said this was despite “emphatic, detailed instructions” he had given the jury every day of the trial to ensure they did not conduct their own internet investigation separate to the evidence before them.
He added that Juror G acknowledged the judge had been “harping on” about personal internet investigations, but “nevertheless he went ahead”.
“Under the Jury Act, I am obliged to discharge a juror who breached the act,” he said.
The court heard police arrived at the court on Wednesday afternoon to interview the remaining jurors. In the process of this, another juror – known as Juror A – was found to have been compromised after being in contact with Juror G, Justice Fagan said.
“There is no finding of misconduct of Juror A, but the communications of those two were somewhat close and repeated,” he told the court.
“(It leads) to a situation where I am satisfied that Juror A could not properly fulfil his duties as a juror.
“In relation to him, I have exercised my discretion to discharge him. I brought him into court this morning and explained the reasons and that he was no longer required to serve on the jury.”
Justice Fagan also said in the process of the police interviews, it was revealed three other members of the jury were aware Juror G was conducting his own internet investigation.
“It does not appear I ever did direct you in terms that if you became aware that one of your number were acting improperly … you should bring that to my attention,” he said.
“You must bring to my attention now if anyone breaches the direction I have so often repeated to you about not making independent inquiries.”
He apologised for being “heavy-handed” about the matter, but said if further jurors are compromised the case would “run the risk of being aborted and run again later, at a cost I leave to your imaginations”.
The trial, which began in February and is expected to last for about six months, relates to Mr Alex, his son Arthur Alex, Gordon McAndrew, Mark Ronald Bryers, Lindsay John Kirschberg and Pasquale Loccisano, who are accused of siphoning off millions of dollars of pay-as-you-go withholding tax from the salaries of labour hire workers through a complicated network of businesses, causing a loss to the tax office.
All six men have pleaded not guilty to conspiring to cause a loss to the commonwealth from mid-2018 to mid-2020 in Sydney and the Gold Coast.
The alleged fraudsters have also denied conspiring to deal with $1m or more while knowing it was the proceeds of a crime.
On the first day of trial in February, Justice Fagan told the jurors to listen carefully to the evidence, and reminded them they are “absolutely forbidden” to conduct their own research into the allegations.
He reminded the jury of the “notorious” criminal trial of Bruce Lehrmann, who was charged with raping Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2021.
The trial was abandoned in 2022 after a juror did their own research and discussed their findings with the other jurors.
A similar result for this trial would be “disastrous”, Justice Fagan told the 11 men and four women at the time.
Some 130 hours of conversations between the six accused men, which were either captured during tapped phone calls or by strategically placed listening devices, were given as evidence as part of the trial.
The devices were planted in January 2019 after the Australian Federal Police obtained a warrant as part of their national investigation into the alleged payroll fraud.
