This website was last edited in October 2023, and is a work in progress.
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The central part of this story is about four professional people: three were lawyers, and one was also an ex-government minister turned ombudsman before returning to being a minister in the John Howard Government in March 1996.
Two are still lawyers today, while the minister resigned from the government and is now a successful businessman. The fourth, who acted as a financial accountant during the government-endorsed arbitrations, later became a qualified, graded arbitrator with an arbitration centre in Melbourne, Australia, and Hong Kong.
All four have one thing in common: they were all involved in administering the Casualties of Telstra arbitrations, which the Australian government had endorsed. All four were partly involved in concealing several crimes the Telstra corporation committed before or during the COT arbitrations.
Three of these professionals were involved in covertly agreeing to use Telstra’s drafted arbitration agreement instead of an independently drafted agreement that the government thought they were endorsing.
Things got even worse when these four began to understand they should not have had secret arbitration meetings with the defendants without the claimants being present, set up a situation where Telstra used a private pre-arbitration forum as well as a covert agreement that allowed the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO)-appointed consultants to have first access to relevant arbitration documents before the arbitrator and claimants viewed them (exhibit 590 File AS-CAV Exhibits 589 to 647), effectively allowed Telstra to control the arbitrations and not the arbitrator.
When the second-appointed TIO officially advised a Senate Estimates Committee (Prologue Evidence File No 22-D) on 26 September 1997 that the arbitrator had no control over the arbitration process, that admission came too late for most of the COT Cases whom this arbitrator had already arbitrated on.
Who was behind this misleading and deceptive conduct?
Clauses 25 and 26 was covrtly removed
Alterations were covertly administered to the arbitration agreement after the COT Cases’ lawyers endorsed it.
To have exposed the removing and altering clauses 25 and 26 before the arbitrations commenced would have implicated these four individuals in what they had allowed. The fact that the three legal personnel had sanctioned using Telstra’s drafted arbitration agreement, as well as removing the $250,000.00 liability clauses in the arbitration agreement Chapter 5 Fraudulent conduct and in making so disadvantaged the COT Cases’ claims and any chance they had of successfully appealing the process should have been investigated in 1995 when this conduct was exposed.
These three people knowingly participated in a tainted arbitration process before it got off the ground.
All the evidence of what took place, and more, as well as the names of the people involved in this terrible, unjust process, can be downloaded from this website, absentjustice.com, as my story unfolds from the chapters in the menu bar above.
Even worse, when the arbitrator became aware that the Telstra-drafted arbitration agreement used in my arbitration was not a credible document to have been used, it was used anyway, to my detriment, as the exhibits on this website show.
How do you publish a true account of what really has happened during various Australian Government endorsed Arbitration's without attaching the exhibits to support those facts as we have been literally forced to do because the corruption within the government bureaucracy is so rife? How does the author prove that government public servants fed privileged information to the then, Australian Government owned telecommunications carrier (the defendants) but also concealed the same documentation from the claimants i.e. their fellow Australian citizens?
How do you tell a story that is so unbelievable that even the author has doubts to the authenticity of what they are writing until they check their records before continuing on with the story being written? How do you expose collusion between an arbitrator, various appointed government watch dogs (umpire) and the defendants? How do you expose the fact that the defendants in an arbitration process (the once Government owned telecommunications carrier) used equipment connected to their network, screened faxed material leaving your office, stored it, without your knowledge or consent, before redirecting it onto to its intended destination?
The defendants (the Telstra Corporation) were surely using this screened material to benefit their arbitration defence to the detriment of the claimants.
A secondary fax machine
illegal phone/fax interception
My 3 February 1994 letter to Michael Lee, Minister for Communications (see Hacking-Julian Assange File No/27-A) and a subsequent letter from Fay Holthuyzen, assistant to the minister (see Hacking-Julian Assange File No/27-B) to Telstra’s corporate secretary, show I was concerned that my faxes were being illegally intercepted.
An internal government memo, dated 25 February 1994, confirms that the minister advised me that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate my allegations of illegal phone/fax interception. (See Hacking-Julian Assange File No/28)
This internal, dated 25 February 1994, is a Government Memo confirming that the then-Minister for Communications and the Arts had written to me to advise that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would investigate my allegations of illegal phone/fax interception. (AFP Evidence File No 4)
The fax imprint across each of the documents and letters provided to two well recognised technical telecommunication specialists both made sworn statements that the fax imprint described in their Scandrett & Associates report (see Open Letter File No/12 and File No/13) were all captured by a secondary fax machine (intercepted) during their arbitrations.
This gave a considerable benefit to the defendant because, of course, that gave them time to decide which aspect of the claim would be easy to defend and which would be best to avoid completely. Try to imagine what that would have felt like for the claimants. It would be best if you also remembered, as we record elsewhere on absentjustice.com, that some of those documents, which we sent off through what should have been a secure fax and postal system, never arrived at their intended destination.
Corruption is contagious and does not respect sectoral boundaries.
Leading up to this Senate hearing 0n 20 August 1997, in parliament house Canberra, Steven Boswell (sadly now deceased) provided his father, Senator Ron Boswell, a fax he had just received from my lawyers, MICHAEL BRERETON & CO (File 51-G Open Letter File No/51-A to 51-G), confirming how the arbitration process had been unlawfully conducted. Steven also reminded his father in the company of several other COT Cases that it was he, his father, who had first raised these unlawful issues on my behalf on 29 November 1994 concerning the threats I had received from Telstra because I had assisted the Australian Federal Police with their investigations into Telstra's unauthorised interception of my telecommunications services.
Threats made
Threats Carried Out
Threats were made against me by Telstra arbitration officials because I assisted the Australian Federal Police with their investigations into these phone and fax hacking issues. Refer page 180 ERC&A, from the official Australian Senate Hansard, dated 29 November 1994, which reports Senator Ron Boswell asking Telstra’s legal directorate:
“Why did Telecom advise the Commonwealth Ombudsman that Telecom withheld FOI documents from Alan Smith because Alan Smith provided Telecom FOI documents to the Australian Federal Police during their investigation?”
After receiving a hollow response from Telstra, which the senator, the AFP and I all knew was utterly false; the senator states:
“…Why would Telecom withhold vital documents from the AFP? Also, why would Telecom penalise COT members for providing documents to the AFP which substantiate that Telecom had conducted unauthorised interceptions of COT members’ communications and subsequently dealt in the intercepted information by providing that information to Telecom’s external legal advisers and others?” Senate Evidence File No 31
Thus, the threats became a reality. What is so appalling about this withholding of relevant documents is this - no one in the TIO office or government has ever investigated the disastrous impact the withholding of documents had had on my overall submission to the arbitrator. The arbitrator and the government (at the time, Telstra was a government-owned entity) should have initiated an investigation into why an Australian citizen, who had assisted the AFP in their investigations into unlawful interception of telephone conversations, was so severely disadvantaged during a civil arbitration.
This harassment by Telstra and their internal security division continued for years. No one in government or the arbitration process would investigate the devastation these threats, harassment combined with corporate thuggery, had on the lives of the COT Case members.
Australian Senate Hansard, see Senate – Parliament of Australia page 125 records Senator Schacht stating:
I ask Telstra: a document that has been colloquially called the ‘pink herring’, that was filed with the US Securities Exchange recently, focused on the adverse publicity of the CoT cases. The document was prepared as part of the privatisation and so on. It focuses more on the effect of the publicity on Telstra, apparently than on the materiality of any sums of money which may ultimately be paid. Will the Australian prospectus for the Telstra sale give a more detailed assessment of the financial effect of the CoT cases on Telstra?
The John Howard government only allowed five litmus tests COT cases out of the twenty-one Cases to have their "Freedom of Information" (FOI) be resolved as part of the Senate Committee investigations had he allowed the other sixteen COT Cases; this would have affected the Telstra sale prospectus. So, the Howard government hung out to dry the other sixteen COT Cases so that any compensation paid to them would not affect the sale prospectus.
The following two links Major Fraud Group Transcript (1) and Major Fraud Group Transcript (2) on page 4 of Transcript (1) shows Senator Ron Boswell, Graham Schorer (COT spokesperson), Bruce Akehurst (Telstra), Mr Anthony Honner (another COT case) and Barry O’Sullivan (negotiator) and later Senator Barry O'Sullivan discussing why the government did not allow my arbitration matters to be viewed by the Senate investigation into the five litmus COT test cases. To have investigated my phone and fax hacking matters along with the other remaining sixteen COT Cases similar (FOI) complaints would have impeded the privatisation of Telstra.
The Australian government did not want to have to answer questions by the US Securities Exchange regarding the prospectus and the 'pink herring' document that had been filed.
ERICSSON
So, as you read Chapter 5 - US Department of Justice vs. Ericsson of Sweden, regularly check the evidence on this website absentjustice.com and the numbered exhibits to ensure you truly appreciate the enormity of the crimes still being committed by Australia's public service officers in 2023. Threats were made and carried out against the COT Cases if they did not succumb to the threats. As shown below in our story because I refused to be intimidated by these threats, which were originally made by Telstra's lawyer Denise McBurnie from Freehill Hollingdale & Page in September 1993 (see Prologue Evidence File 1-A to 1-C) and again in July 1994 by Telstra Paul Rumble (see Senate Evidence File No 31), I was not provided with the documents needed to prove my claim.
Therefore, it is important to introduce here the bribery and corruption issues the US Department of Justice raised against Ericsson of Sweden on 19 December 2019 as recorded in the Australian media i.e.;
"One of Telstra's key partners in the building out of their 5G network in Australia is set to fork out over $1.4 billion after the US Department of Justice accused them of bribery and corruption on a massive scale and over a long period of time.
Sweden's telecoms giant Ericsson has agreed to pay more than $1.4 billion following an extensive investigation which saw the Telstra-linked Company 'admitting to a years-long campaign of corruption in five countries to solidify its grip on telecommunications business." (https://www.channelnews.com.au/key-telstra-5g-partner-admits-to-bribery-corruption/)
It is clear from the following google link "Angry shareholders sanction Ericsson chiefs over Iraq ... https://www.icij.org › investigations › ericsson-list › angry.." that the COT Cases were right to demand answers to why Ericsson was allowed to purchase the main arbitration technical witness investigating their claims against Ericsson's telephone equipment which was the subject matter under investigation during the COT arbitrations. Why hasn't the Australian government called for answers as to why the COT Cases were treated so badly when Ericsson was able to nobble Lane?
Worse for the first four COT Cases was we could not even attempt to sue Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd for their unethical conduct when they sold us out to Ericsson. Removing the liability $250,000 caps in clauses 25 and 26 in the arbitration agreement (see above) disallowed us that opportunity. We felt as though we were trapped in a a spiders web.
I again ask the governemnt, why was Ericsson allowed to puchase Lane Telecommunications Pty Ltd during an Australian government endosred arbitration process?
Lane acquired all of the COT Case claim documents, reports and their private business information under a special confidentiality agreement with a strict clause forbidding Lane to provide that data to any party other than the arbitrator and the Australian Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman. However, once Ericsson purchased Lane during the COT Cases v Telstra v arbitrations, they bought all of the technical and business material on Lane's computer hard drives, which included government-acquired technical information, which Lane had also accumulated as technical consultants to the Australian government.
How much Australian government technical data which was initially installed on Lane's computers while working on Australian government projects (information concerning Australian citizens) became the property of Ericsson when Lane sold itself, even though they were the principal witness in the COT Cases arbitrations at the time of this sale?
Even though the following link https://shorturl.at/wFSY5 shows Ericsson mobile customers were having significant phone problems in 2018, Ericsson denied the problems were widespread when the evidence shows those problems were worldwide, affecting millions of Ericsson customers. I reiterate that had Ericsson and Telstra not mislead and deceived the COT Cases arbitrator between 1994 and 1998 concerning the ongoing Ericsson AXE equipment used by Telstra, the COT Cases business lives could have been salvaged.
