Two public servants accused of "corrupting" governmental IT recruitment processes for their own financial gain are not guilty of conspiracy charges because they only wanted the best candidates to help alleviate the pressure of delivering "very complex computer systems", a defence lawyer has argued.
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Abdul "Alex" Aziz El-Debel and Raminder Singh Kahlon are on trial in the ACT Supreme Court after being charged with conspiring to dishonestly obtain a gain from the Commonwealth, to which they have pleaded not guilty, between March 2019 and June 2020
The pair is accused of working with another man, Gopalakrishnan Suryanarayanan Vilayur, to corrupt the Department of Finance's procurement processes to favour candidates at New Horizons Business Solutions and Algoram.
The two businesses are respectively owned by Kahlon and Vilayur, the latter of whom is not part of this trial.
The alleged corruption included writing position descriptions and being part of an evaluation panel.
Following the contracts being awarded, the trio allegedly shared in the profit margins received by the businesses.
One of the projects in question included a parliamentary expense-management system that replaced a paper-based system to allow parliamentarians and ex-parliamentarians to make claims.
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In his opening address on Wednesday, defence barrister Matthew Kalyk, representing Kahlon, said the evidence would show the prosecution could not establish the trio conspired.
Mr Kalyk said evidence would show that calls between El-Debel and Vilayur indicated "they were anxious to ensure the best candidates were selected and were frustrated from time to time about the kind of resources engaged by the department".
The court heard that transcripts from a call showed Vilayur saying "Alex, I need some urgent help mate" and that a "development shortage is killing me man" and "all these newcomers are struggling".
El-Debel also asked Vilayur "you say you want them through your company?" to which the latter replied with: "I don't really care, mate. I need these resources".
Mr Kalyk also said the two men "expressed a real frustration about how many hours they're working on these very complex computer systems and how difficult it is to do that with people who aren't effective at their jobs".
"The point is that these are massive projects. People like Alex and Gopal [Vilayur] were under pressure to deliver them," he said.
He said the men wanted to "avoid issues they previously experienced" related to expenses and deadlines.
The defence lawyer said the two men also excluded themselves from an evaluation panel and that El-Debel declared a conflict of interest.
He said the contracts involving Kahlon's and Vilayur's businesses represented only a small portion of the contracts involved in the department's IT projects at the time.
In relation to the alleged sharing of proceeds, Mr Kalyk said it was an issue "clearly in dispute" and questioned whether it had "any connection with so-called corrupted processes".
On Tuesday, Commonwealth prosecutor David Staehli SC in his opening address said the environment of the department "appears to be somewhat of a hothouse in relation to the amount of work that was on hand".
The jury trial presided over by Justice Michael Elkaim is expected to take four weeks.
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