ACT court sentences Abdul El-Debel, Raminder Kahlon for conspiracy against Finance Department

Abdul Aziz El-Debel and Raminder Singh Kahlon had pleaded not guilty to conspiring with each other and a third man with the intention of dishonestly obtaining a gain from the Commonwealth between March 2019 and June 2020.

The third man, whose name is subject to a non-publication order, was not part of the ACT Supreme Court trial with El-Debel, also known as Alex, and Kahlon that ran from June to July.

The jury found the duo guilty of the charge, which carries a maximum 10-year jail term.

El-Debel, who was once offered a contract with the Canberra Raiders, and Kahlon, who argued he should be given credit for participating in a police interview, faced the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday for sentencing.

El-Debel was employed in a senior role at the department where he oversaw spending, including the procurement of personnel to work in various IT projects.

Kahlon and the third man were contractors to the department and ran their own companies, namely New Horizons Business Solutions and Algoram, respectively.

The two companies put forward candidates for the various positions for the IT projects.

If accepted, the candidates, who were subcontractors, were remunerated by payments from the department to the companies.

The companies then deducted margins, essentially commissions, from the payments before passing the balance onto the subcontractors.

The conspiracy was to influence or corrupt the department's procurement processes relating to the projects to favour candidates from the two companies, which then distributed the margins to the offenders.

During trial, the court heard the contracts awarded to the companies represented only a small portion of about $25m worth of IT contracts at the department at the time.

The court on Tuesday heard that both men maintain their innocence, with El-Debel telling pre-sentence report authors his actions actually reduced expenses for the Commonwealth.

He said "you should be praised for making decisions as a director of finance for saving costs to taxpayers".

Among the prosecution's arguments was that the company name Algoram was a combination of all of the three men's first names.

Justice Michael Elkaim previously said if that name were based on anything else, it would be "one of the greatest coincidences known to mankind".

He said he was "faced with sentencing two intelligent, high-achieving, respected family men who have, probably through greed, ruined their reputations and harmed their families' lives".

He said, however, the offending must be tempered by a number of factors, including that the illegal margins did not cost the department because the amounts paid would have been paid to whichever of the many companies, which put forward candidates, that would have been successful.

Further, that the prosecution could not say how much money was gained or how much was paid to El-Debel for his role in the conspiracy even if there was an inference for the latter.

Other factors included occasions when candidates put forward by competing companies were favoured instead of those by New Horizons or Algoram.

"This may have occurred to maintain an appearance of legitimacy but nevertheless strengthens the picture of the conspiracy acting on a part-time basis," Justice Elkaim said.

He said the evidence also showed that "very little work" in the conspiracy was conducted before March 2020.

"It is nevertheless serious because it involved the infiltration and manipulation of a public organisation," he said.

"If the fraud had revealed a significant loss to the Commonwealth or a quantifiable large gain to the offenders, a sentence of full-time imprisonment would have been inevitable."

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The judge said both men had also suffered extra-curial punishment because of unjustified and improper racist comments on Facebook.

The men, who were found to have not shown remorse and assessed as having a low risk of re-offending, were sentenced to intensive corrections orders of three years and six months each.

"In reaching this conclusion, I have also taken into account, but to a lesser degree than usual, the previous good character of the offenders and their previous position as decent and contributing members of society," Justice Elkaim said.

Further, they are ordered to perform 300 hours of community service.

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