‘Fall from grace’: Official’s shock conviction
A former Home Affairs employee has been slapped with a suspended sentence after she was convicted of accessing restricted information and sharing it with others for more than a decade.
In a scandal described as “quite a fall from grace”, the unnamed official repeatedly accessed department records she was not authorised to between December 2010 and January 2022, and shared key information with friends and former tenants to help their visa applications, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) said in a statement on Tuesday.
The “abuse of public office” spanned former Labor and Coalition governments, including when current Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was home affairs minister.
The corruption watchdog said the ex-employee used the sensitive information to “warn her friends to stop their visa applications to avoid rejection, in one instance potentially saving them approximately $6,800”.
“A former Department of Home Affairs employee has been sentenced for abuse of public office, unauthorised disclosure of official information, and unauthorised access to Home Affairs records of or for her family, friends, associates and tenants, over an extended period of time,” the NACC said.
“Following a guilty plea in August 2024, the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney sentenced the former official on 29 October 2024 for contraventions of the Criminal Code including unauthorised access to restricted data, unauthorised disclosure of information, and abuse of public office.”
The ex-official also used restricted information to “aid in her own application to the NSW Supreme Court to remove a solicitor from the probate process of her deceased friend” and “provide her friends with the personal details of individuals, which they later used to submit reports through the Border Watch Online Report.”
“In outlining the seriousness of the offending, Deputy Chief Magistrate Tsavdaridis described the conduct as ‘egregious’, ‘dishonest’ and ‘quite a fall from grace’,” according to the NACC.
The anti-corruption body took over the investigation into the official after the agency was set up last year.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s office referred NewsWire to the NACC when approached for comment.