DYING VOW TO EXPOSE BUGGING BREACH – Monday May 21 2012

– A dying police hero has accused Victoria’s most senior crime-fighter of improperly using information heard on a phone tap.
Former Detective John Kapetanovski made the explosive allegation against Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner (Crime) Graham Ashton, in a dying declaration to the Ombudsman.
Mr Kapetanovski, who died eight weeks ago, alleged in a sworn statement that Mr Ashton – then Deputy Director of the Office of Police Integrity – used information overheard on a telephone intercept to scuttle a senior public servant’s appointment to a new job.
The female public servant held a senior position at a sensitive Commonwealth agency when the OPI installed audio and video surveillance in an apartment she stayed in during a work trip to Melbourne in 2007.
At the time she was bugged, the woman held one of the highest security classifications in Australia.
Mr Kapetanovski, a Valour Award winner during his 32-year police career, was head of the OPI’s integrity testing unit at the time.
The woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said she had no idea the executive apartment in South Yarra had been bugged until told by the media.
She was shocked by the OPI’s tactics.
Her conversations were intercepted by the OPI during an investigation whose targets included then Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby and former Police Association secretary Paul Mullett.
Her job was withdrawn the day before she was due to start after phone tap information was passed to her new employer by the OPI.
The woman, a friend of Mr Ashby, was not a target of the OPI investigation.
Mr Kapetanovski’s allegations have been supported by Mr Ashby and Mr Mullett, who have produced fresh information to back a new call for an independent inquiry into alleged breaches of the Telecommunications Interception and Access Act.
Mr Ashton said he was prevented from commenting by OPI secrecy provisions. But he said that, in his view, Operation Diana “was conducted entirely appropriately and lawfully”.
An OPI spokesman said yesterday it was “satisfied that all aspects of this operation have been conducted lawfully and appropriately.
The OPI’s poor strike rate and the delay in establishing its replacement, an Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission, has become a major issue for the Baillieu Government.
Mr Ashby and Mr Mullett said yesterday they would not rest until someone was held accountable for the way they were pursued.
Mr Mullet believed stalling tactics were being used to thwart an inquiry until the six-year statute of limitations had passed.
Mr Ashby and Mr Mullett were both charged with criminal offences as a result of Operation Diana, which was established by the OPI in 2007 to investigate police leaks in a covert investigation, called Operation Briars, into the murder of “vampire” prostitute Shane Chartres- Abbott.
They were both charged with perjury for misleading the OPI. Mr Ashby was acquitted by a judge and charges against Mr Mullett were withdrawn.
During Mr Ashby’s committal hearing in 2010, Mr Ashton said he had never improperly passed on any information from phone taps – Geoff Wilkinson

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