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A cleaning contractor boss was heard in bombshell phone recordings instructing his nephew to wipe dirty rags that had bin juice on them around Melbourne train carriages in a sneaky ploy to boost profits, a corruption inquiry has heard.
Transclean was paid $1.3 million a month to significantly ramp up cleaning of the city’s Metro trains last year during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Independent Broad-based Anti Corruption Commission is investigating allegations V/Line chief executive James Pinder, who was sacked in October last year, accepted bribes from Transclean in return for government contracts.
An IBAC inquiry heard on Thursday that Transclean used a disinfectant product called Oxivir between February and April that required staff to use it daily.
However when Metro wanted to trial a longer-lasting product called Zoono to cut the amount of cleaning needed — and therefore reduce Transclean’s profit — managing director George Haritos became involved in a plan to sabotage it, according to counsel assisting Paul Lawrie.
In phone recordings played at the hearing, Mr Haritos was heard telling his nephew, Steve Kyritsis, to deliberately wipe rags with bin juice on train surfaces to “contaminate” the trains and make Zoono seem less effective.
Mr Kyritsis was even told to wipe them on buttons and the microphone in the drivers’ cabs.
“What I was going to say … uh … tomorrow night will be a good time to contaminate the trains,” Mr Haritos says in one phone call.
Mr Kyritsis then laughs before replying “yep”.
“Maybe not stench, but you know, the rubbish, the household rubbish,” Mr Haritos says.
Kyritsis: “Yep.”
Haritos: “With a serviette?”
Kyritsis: “Yep.”
In a separate phone call between Mr Kyritsis and Mr Haritos they discuss gathering dirty rags to wipe on surfaces inside train carriages.
“And leave it in your bin, put in a bag and give it tomorrow,” Mr Haritos says.
“Yeah. Might do the dishes with it,” his nephew says.
Haritos then responds: “Dishes, may, and then put a little bit in the bin.”
“They wont need much, because it, it’ll just be a trace. That’s why, if you put too much on it, it’ll be obvious that it’s exploded, and they do tests all the time, so they’ll know what’s in a normal range,” Kyritsis then says.
Mr Lawrie asked Mr Kyritsis if there was a deliberate scheme to “sabotage” trials of the new product’s efficiency.
Before the calls were played Mr Kyritsis said it “rang a bell” but afterwards he admitted he “remembered it now”.
“You actually went and did this, did you?” Mr Lawrie asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Mr Kyritsis replied.
“On how many occasions?” Mr Lawrie then questioned, to which Mr Kyritsis said he “wasn’t sure”.
He told the inquiry it was the idea of Peter Bollas, who was the Metro Trains fleet manager at the time, to “discredit some of the results” of the trials.
Mr Lawrie put to Mr Kyritsis that it was a “conspiracy between you, your uncle and Mr Bollas to sabotage these trials so Zoono would not be the chemical that would be used”.
“I think it was Peter who put it to me … I can’t remember the nature of the conversations we had … he wanted us to possibly contaminate or I can’t remember if it was the surfaces or trains … something to that effect,” Mr Kyritsis said.
Mr Lawrie said Mr Bollas’s involvement came about because he was on the payroll of Transclean and already receiving secret monthly payments of about $10,000 a month.
The hearings continues.
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