A Big Build contractor under scrutiny for its ties to gangland figure Mick Gatto and a donation it gave Victoria’s Labor Party has lashed out, claiming the company was merely one of many Big Build firms that bankrolled the government’s election and that focus should be on Big Build corruption.
In a message Anthony Ciccone sent to The Age after it was revealed he donated $3264 to the Victorian ALP in 2022, the veteran construction industry figure queried why there had been no reporting about a major Big Build subcontractor that he alleged had gifted expensive utes and jet-skis to project managers on the Suburban Rail Loop.
Ciccone said the contractor was removed from the rail project “for giving Toyota SR5 utes to general superintendents as gifts”, as well as three jet-skis.
The Victorian government has committed about one-third of the $38 billion anticipated total cost towards the Suburban Rail Loop’s first stage. It has secured $2.2 billion from the federal government and is expected to contribute more in the May budget.
The state government plans to fund the final third through parking levies, existing land taxes and developer charges.
Ciccone, who owns Cycon Civil and co-owns labour hire firm Project Labour Solutions (PLS), also questioned why other political donors who worked as contractors on Labor’s signature infrastructure scheme had not been identified.
Where are “all the other companies that donated?” Ciccone said in his message.
Ciccone’s comments came after The Age reported on Tuesday that Victorian Labor had collected thousands of dollars in donations from firms that now face police action over suspected corrupt payments or that placed gangland, bikie or CFMEU identities on taxpayer-funded projects.
The donors include a traffic management firm on Labor’s signature $100 billion Big Build program, whose owner has been charged by Victoria Police’s anti-corruption and gangland building industry taskforce; another Big Build subcontractor facing a federal police probe for allegedly bribing a corrupt CFMEU boss; and the owners of two Big Build firms represented by gangland figure Mick Gatto.
Premier Jacinta Allan said on Tuesday that donations were a matter for the party but that she noted the donations were lawful and appropriately declared.
When asked repeatedly if she was comfortable with the donations, Allan again said they were a matter for the party.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also told the ABC that donations were a matter for the party.
The revelation of the political money trail from Big Build subcontractors that are the subject of law enforcement probes or have gangland links presents a fresh crisis for the Allan government.
The premier was already under mounting pressure over her refusal to back a sweeping inquiry into claims Labor turned a blind eye to wrongdoing on its signature infrastructure projects while she was the responsible minister.
The donations uncovered by this masthead would not be caught under Allan’s CFMEU donations ban – introduced in response to the Building Bad series in mid-2024 – because they come from companies and not the CFMEU.
They would almost certainly have been uncovered by the broad-style inquiry that the state and federal opposition, along with anti-corruption advocates such as Transparency International, have demanded.
The Victorian Election Commission, corporate and other records analysed by this masthead reveal the individual CFMEU-aligned building company donors who contributed to Labor’s election campaign in 2022.
The donations came as the union’s grip over the Labor government’s Big Build scheme solidified, creating huge profit-making opportunities for some donors because the CFMEU was pushing them onto contractors.
Donation records show that Ciccone was an election-year ALP donor in 2022. Last August, Ciccone engaged Gatto to help resolve a dispute involving his Big Build operations. Gatto has also supported PLS, which Ciccone co-owns and which employs the wife of ex-union boss Derek Christopher (Watson described Christopher as corrupt in his report).
In Watson’s report, Cycon is identified as employing a union delegate with possible Comancheros connections.
Ciccone’s Big Build company also has a business partnership with a firm run by an ex-Finks bikie Tom Estcourt, who recently faced court and received a good behaviour bond after Taskforce Hawk found him possessing anabolic steroids.
Ciccone had said on Monday that he had no recollection of the donation, but on Tuesday, he queried why The Age had not identified other donors from the Big Build.
Another donor was traffic management company B K Labour, a firm that had made tens of millions of dollars supplying workers to the Big Build. B K’s founder and owner, Bernard Kearney, was charged with fraud by the police Taskforce Hawk in December, over allegedly fake Big Build invoices.
At the time of his arrest, police said the firm was being probed over alleged “corrupt payments” and that detectives would allege invoices were falsified. Police also said they were “investigating a number of other payments and cash withdrawals” as part of an operation to specifically target criminal behaviour linked to the construction industry.
Donation records reveal B K Labour donated at least $3264 to Victorian Labor in May 2022. In his landmark report last week, corruption buster Geoffrey Watson, SC, said B K Labour was forced into the Big Build by ex-union boss Joe Myles, who warned “contractors to use B K Labour or they would suffer industrial action”. B K Labour was contacted for comment.
The donations uncovered by this masthead likely represent a fraction of the funds given by Big Build firms with links to suspected improper behaviour or gangland figures because many of them made donations directly to the CFMEU, which in turn gave the ALP more than $500,000 heading into the November 2022 election.
The CFMEU has never revealed which building firms contributed to its election war chest, although multiple Big Build and union sources said a union faction, including bikie boss Joel Leavett and ex-union boss Myles, pressured firms to donate to the union.
On Monday, Victoria’s corruption watchdog revealed it did not investigate a referral from Premier Jacinta Allan concerning allegations of organised crime and graft on taxpayer-funded projects because it was outside its remit.
Allan’s mid-2024 referral was detailed in a letter to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission released on Sunday, noting allegations of organised crime and behaviour to favour CFMEU-linked firms.
IBAC does not typically comment on its referrals, but, because the letter was released publicly, it confirmed the matters in Allan’s letter were outside its scope.
On Tuesday, Allan would not say whether she had already been informed of IBAC’s decision when her office released her referral letter on the weekend, having insisted over recent days she had referred the allegations to IBAC as the appropriate agency to investigate corruption.
Allan was repeatedly asked at a testy press conference when she knew that IBAC had decided it could not investigate, including whether it was before her office released her referral letter, and whether she should have been aware that her referral would fail.
She said the advice had come through the department that IBAC was not investigating, and she would need to check when that occurred.
Allan said she had also written to Victoria Police and the Fair Work Commission at the same time in the days after this masthead’s Building Bad investigation – with 60 Minutes and the Australian Financial Review – broke.
Both the Opposition and the Greens have backed giving IBAC new powers to follow taxpayer money to subcontractors and labour hire for investigations.
Shadow Attorney-General James Newbury said the Opposition would introduce its own bill but would support the government if it chose to introduce its own.
It also referred to revelations in The Age that firms named in Watson’s report, including those subject to police action, had made donations to Labor to IBAC.
The Victorian Greens have also said it would this week release draft laws that would give the state’s corruption watchdog “follow the dollar” powers to pursue investigations into the use of taxpayer funds when they trickle down to private subcontractors.
IBAC has asked for these powers, and a parliamentary inquiry has also recommended they be provided. The construction industry is one of the biggest sectors to use subcontracting and labour hire arrangements, where much of the graft on taxpayer projects has been identified.
Allan said she had no announcements to make today on whether her government would give IBAC the follow-the-dollar powers.
Half a dozen Labor MPs from the western suburbs joined the premier and Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas at the new Footscray Hospital, which opens on Wednesday, for the press event.
Backbench MP Luba Grigorovitch, formerly Rail, Tram and Bus Union secretary, was asked whether she regretted prominently standing by former CFMEU state secretary John Setka.
“Look, the allegations that have been made are serious. They truly are. They are disgusting, and as the premier has said, they’re completely unacceptable,” Grigorovitch said.
She said she was “not going to back away” from the fact that the pair were close while they were both union secretaries, but that she had not spoken to Setka in “quite a while”. “I’ve just had two babies, I’m not exactly sure on my last phone calls.”
The premier again dismissed an estimate that $15 billion had been lost to corruption on its Big Build program of work and continued to rebuff calls for a royal commission to test the figure, which was estimated by Geoffrey Watson and backed up by the Fair Work Commission.
The estimate was described as untested by the CFMEU administrator Mark Irving, but was separately backed by Fair Work Commission general manager Murray Furlong.
“Those claims have been dismissed,” Allan claimed.
She would not say how much taxpayer money lost to corruption on the Big Build would warrant action.
At one point, the gathered MPs were each asked whether they wanted the $15 billion figure tested.
Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said Allan had been “incredibly strong and decisive in the action that she has taken”.
She then claimed the $15 billion figure was “not worthy of further consideration”.
Pressed again whether any of the other MPs would like to speak, Sarah Connolly eventually conceded her western suburbs constituents have asked her about the figure.
“Yes, they do. And I talk to them about the steps that the premier has outlined that we are taking,” she said.
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Nick McKenzie is an Age investigative journalist who has three times been named the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year. A winner of 20 Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley, he investigates politics, business, foreign affairs and criminal justice.Connect via email.
Rachel Eddie is a Victorian state political reporter for The Age. Contact her at rachel.eddie@theage.com.au, rachel.eddie@protonmail.com, or via Signal at @RachelEddie.99Connect via X or email.
