Third University official jailed - The Age March 19, 2006

A third former senior executive at Victoria University has been jailed over an elaborate fraud that cost the institution up to $30 million. Christopher Browney, 43, the university's manager of facilities, inner region, admitted receiving about $36,000 in kickbacks for processing $1 million worth of bogus invoices between 1996 and 2001. The kickbacks included shares in racehorses and home renovations.

There was also a golfing trip to Singapore and Thailand in which Browney travelled at the university's expense. Partly and totally fictitious invoices were submitted to cover the $4750 cost of the trip.

Browney, a father of two from Kilsyth, was jailed for a minimum of nine months after pleading guilty to three counts of conspiracy to defraud and one count of obtaining property by deception. He is one of 20 people to be charged over the alleged scam.

County Court judge Phillip Coish said Browney and others had decided to work with racehorse owner John Cappellin, who was associated with a number of companies providing maintenance and other services at the university, to "corrupt the process for allocating and awarding contracts to service providers in return for kickbacks".

Twenty people were charged over the alleged Victoria University fraud after a complex three-year police investigation code-named Harmonics.

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