The advisers driving the “bike boy scandal” campaign against former premier Daniel Andrews gave tens of thousands of dollars in “gifts” to potential witnesses in lawsuits they lodged on behalf of the young cyclist at the centre of the case, court documents reveal.
The allegations are contained in a civil case filed by the campaign’s former lawyer Greg Griffin, who is the latest of the team’s ex-counsel to chase them for unpaid fees – despite the campaign fundraising hundreds of thousands of dollars for their actions against Andrews.
Ryan Meuleman, now known as “bike boy”, was 15 when he was badly injured in a collision with the Andrews’ car in 2013, driven by the then-opposition leader’s wife, Catherine. Police cleared the pair of any wrongdoing, but unverified tales of a cover-up have haunted the case ever since.
Meuleman is now suing the couple for defamation, after settling a case against his former lawyers, Slater and Gordon, whom he had accused of pressuring him to take an $80,000 compensation payout from the Transport Accident Commission (TAC).
The “bombshell” evidence about Andrews and the crash then spruiked by the bike boy campaign team was never tested in court. But records from inside the campaign have now come to light in separate legal action by two of Meuleman’s former lawyers chasing hundreds of thousands in unpaid fees.
The documents allege the campaign gifted cash from public fundraisers to people it had intended to call as witnesses.
A statement of claim in South Australia’s Supreme Court says that in December 2024 Meuleman’s then lawyer, Griffin, was sent a spreadsheet by the campaign showing where the more than $200,000 in fundraising money raised by that time had been spent.
About $46,000 had paid some lawyers, but the records also showed nearly $30,000 had been spent on “gifts” and “recompensation” for those involved in the campaign, according to the claim.
Among the ledger was what was described as “ex-gratia payments as a thank you” totalling $10,000 to former police assistant commissioner Dr Raymond Shuey, who wrote an expert report on the crash that the campaign planned to rely on in the Slater and Gordon lawsuit.
There were also three “ex-gratia” payments of $1000 each to three other ex-cops they had then intended to call as witnesses in that case, the court documents claim.
More than $14,000 was also paid to Ryan Meuleman and his father Peter “to recompense” them, according to the suit – both for the partial cost of Peter’s varicose veins surgery and then “various fines” incurred by Ryan, who is now in his late 20s
Witnesses can be directly compensated for reasonable expenses incurred for attending court, such as travel costs, and experts are usually paid for time spent preparing reports for hearings, not given gifts.
Last year, The Age revealed that a small cohort of “external advisers”, including Liberal Party powerbrokers and anti-lockdown agitators, were driving the bike boy legal action, rather than the Meulemans, and holding on to the money fundraised for them. Running the show, according to all involved, was PR veteran Rohan Wenn,who works by day for independent MPs and has helped run other anti-Andrews campaigns such as “slug gate”, as well as design engineer-turned-amateur detective Colin Robertson.
Griffin claims Wenn hired him for Meuleman on a retainer estimated at between $300,000 and $500,000 to take on multiple court actions the campaign was pursuing, having already let several legal teams go.
But Griffin and Meuleman’s original lawyer, George Defteros, each say they were fired by Wenn when they were on the cusp of settling Meuleman’s first lawsuit against Slater and Gordon and have yet to be paid. Both said they had raised concerns that the “bike boy quest for justice” was no longer about Ryan’s best interests.
Wenn told this masthead that Shuey had been paid for his time as an expert witness but sadly died shortly after finishing his report. And “when his family issued an invoice, it was paid immediately,” Wenn said.
He claimed the other three men were never going to be called as witnesses for the Slater and Gordon case, despite comments to the contrary made by the campaign and its lawyers, including Griffin, at the time in 2025.
The ex-cops have since taken over from Robertson and Shuey as investigators for the campaign, with some featuring on its new podcast hosted by Wenn.
“Of course, I was going to call them as witnesses,” Griffin told this masthead this week, noting their testimony had already been flagged as important to the case in court documents he filed at the time.
The bike boy cohort dispute both Griffin and Defteros’s claims (and bills) and say they offered Griffin about $14,000 for his work on the defamation suit only.
In their near-identical defences to Griffin’s case, Ryan Meuleman and Wenn claim Griffin’s payment agreement was with a group of “high-net worth donors” whose contributions never materialised, not the campaign itself.
They accuse Griffin of malpractice, and claim the GoFundMe money was never intended to be spent on lawyers for the Meulemans, despite the public campaign stating it was for the cost of their legal battles.
In his separate defence, Robertson claims that he was not personally in charge of hiring and firing lawyers, or funding decisions, which were made “by committee consensus” within the campaign, and so he was not liable for unpaid fees, though he conceded that he and Wenn had been responsible for the money from the GoFundMe on paper and had moved it around for lawsuits.
Robertson also acknowledged that he had sent the spreadsheet to Griffin that itemised those payments, and that Griffin had carried out legal work “pursuant to instructions arranged at group level”.
Robertson, who the campaign has previously falsely portrayed as a road crash expert, said he quit the bike boy team in June 2025 and was no longer involved. But he could not comment further as he defends Griffin’s lawsuit chasing himself, Wenn and Meuleman for the unpaid bills.
In mid-March 2025, when Slater and Gordon made a settlement offer to the Meuleman camp in his compensation fight, Griffin brought it directly to Ryan and Peter – a move Wenn and Meuleman rail against in court documents as “deceptive” as it cut Wenn out as intermediary.
“It was objections to my dealing directly with Ryan and Peter that soured things,” Griffin told this masthead. “But it was a good offer. They needed to consider it.”
Griffin was soon after fired via text message, and the Meulemans still settled the case.
Defteros has now filed his own separate claim in Victoria’s County Court having been chasing payment from the campaign, including costly trial expenses, since Wenn fired him under similar circumstances.
Defteros says he had raised concerns that those advising Meuleman may not have been acting in his best interests. “We had a clear conflict with those advising Ryan and the direction in which the case was going”, Defteros told this masthead, adding he was also seeking information on how the campaign is spending its large fundraising pot.
In March 2025, after The Age revealed that the Meuleman family did not have access to the campaign’s $260,000 GoFundMe fundraiser, which was instead held in trust by Wenn and Robertson’s private company, Ryan’s father, Peter, was put on the fund’s paperwork, at his request.
A few months later, the company running the fund was deregistered and a new fundraiser was set up. It has since raised a further $133,000 as of March this year, for the defamation lawsuit against the Andrews, as well as an attempt to pursue a private criminal prosecution of the couple for allegedly obstructing justice, which has not eventuated.
Wenn said more than $200,000 in legal fees had since been paid for the original Slater case and that the Meuleman family now oversaw how the GoFundMe donations were spent.
But the Meulemans did not respond to requests for comment and Wenn did not answer questions on whether he or others in the campaign, including those running its social media, had been paid themselves. “The disputes with Greg and George will be resolved through the usual legal processes,” Wenn said.
Griffin told this masthead that fundraising laws needed to be tightened in Victoria to ensure there was someone checking money raised from the public was being spent as stated.
Meanwhile, Meuleman’s defamation fight against Andrews and his wife is continuing in the Federal Court. The former premier says in defence documents the suit is “politically motivated” and the latest chapter in a co-ordinated smear campaign against him by the family’s advisers.
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Sherryn Groch is a journalist at The Age covering crime. Email her at s.groch@nine.com.au or contact her securely on Signal @SherrynG.70Connect via X or email.
