Howdy dear availees everywhere...had a bumper week of writing correspondence, blog-related travel, and giving evidence to a Parliamentary Inquiry...not going to get into that stuff today, not least of all 'cos it's all still 'happening', but I'll post it real soon...just as as I put-up my last piece about that abject horror-head, Liberal/National Party stooge Pru Goward, literally as I was posting, in Federal Parliament the LNP were voting-down motion to have Christian Porter referred to the Privileges Committee regarding his extraordinary 'Blind Trust'...yet again I defer to the most excellent True Crimes News Weekly for this very detailed article about the bizarre conduct of Scott 'Scummo' Morrison et al, who have now effectively trashed 120 years of Parliamentary Convention, and as a result, focussed even more attention on this issue...see y'all on the other side...***
SLUSH FUND THEY WANT YOU TO BE BLIND TO! “Alleged rapist” Christian Porter believed to have received help from billionaires, disgraced lawyers & even News Corp journalist Paul Kelly
EXCLUSIVE: A coterie of powerful billionaires, prominent News Corp journalists, and a disgraced lawyer who was once charged and then acquitted over his own wife’s murder, as well as conservative organisations closely linked to the Liberal Party are said to have helped and secretly donated to “alleged rapist” Christian Porter’s slush fund for his ultimately doomed defamation battle against the ABC. Tayla Foster and Serkan Ozturk with this major investigation.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Liberal Party heavyweight, Christian Porter, continue to deny any apparent knowledge of the ‘anonymous sponsors’ that have covered Porter’s legal fees in his million dollar defamation lawsuit lodged against the ABC network, more specifically against investigative reporter Louise Milligan.
The defamation claims stem from Ms Milligan’s article earlier this year alluding to readers that a senior Cabinet Minister was implicated in allegations of having “brutally” raped a 16-year-old schoolgirl publicly known as ‘Kate’ on multiple occasions during one night in Sydney in 1988 while on a trip for a debating competition.
Porter’s accuser died in mysterious circumstances last June in South Australia while trying to get NSW Police to investigate her allegations for months, with her death being declared a suicide, even though a coronial inquest is yet to be held.
It has since been discovered that senior NSW Police officers helped stonewall the investigation into the woman’s allegations for months, before her tragic death mid-last year.
Soon after ‘Kate’ made her initial complaints to NSW Police about Porter’s alleged sexual abuse which were never seemingly followed up on, the “alleged rapist” politician used the private plane of Nev Power – a former CEO of Fortescue Metals and until recently the head of the head of the National COVID-19 Commission Advisory Board – to travel back and forth from Perth to Sydney and Canberra a number of times for still unexplained reasons.
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has previously alluded to claims ‘Kate’ may not have taken her life but instead may have been the victim of foul play.
Close friends of ‘Kate’ have asked for a coronial inquest to be held into the circumstances of her untimely passing.
Porter had initially claimed he would use the defamation case against the ABC as a proxy to a proper legal inquiry or even criminal trial into the allegations, where he would take the stand and clear his name. Instead, he did no such thing and used the case to convince Justice Jayne Jagot to place all the ABC’s evidence against him into a secret tranche of documents out of view from public scrutiny. The case then concluded with the ABC not paying any damages to Porter over its reporting, and simply added an editorial note to Ms Milligan’s original report.
Porter, who was Attorney-General when the allegations were made public earlier this year, outed himself after both the Kangaroo Court of Australia website and True Crime News Weekly named him as the minister at the centre of the alleged sexual abuse scandal and cover-up a few days following Ms Milligan’s article for the ABC in late February.
Porter’s self-outing also came about following pressure from other Liberal Party MPs who were being wrongly implicated in the scandal, such as Health Minister Greg Hunt and Communications Minster Paul Fletcher, who had also been present at the same debating championship in 1988.
Porter, who has always had a stated belief since a teenager that he would end up as this nation’s prime minister, was moved aside as Attorney-General following a grueling press conference in early March where he issued barely believable “strenuous denials” about his involvement in the incident.
“I was only 17,” Porter bizarrely repeated three times during questioning from journalists in an apparent bid for clemency or to clear a possibly guilty conscience.
Months later, in mid-September, Porter was then forced by Morrison to resign from the role of Science Minister to which he had been shunted to, after it became apparent the “alleged rapist” had used a secret slush fund totaling at least $500,000 to help in his defamation battle against the ABC.
At the time, Porter blamed the likes of True Crime News Weekly and the wider “Twitter mob” for his demise from the front bench.
As if they were running the nation like a pair of b-grade mafia bosses, Morrison and Porter remained adamant that they need not reveal where any of the money came from. That’s despite clear parliamentary guidelines decreeing members of a political party cannot take donations or gifts of over $300 without declaring it.
In a bid to hide the true nefarious nature of Porter’s donations, the government and its spin doctors cleverly initially claimed the “alleged rapist” had used a so-called “blind trust” only known as the Legal Services Trust to pay his legal fees. It was a term the corporate media willingly lapped up, until just a few days ago.
As True Crime News Weekly exclusively revealed mid-last month, it is alleged that there was and has never been no “blind trust”. Instead, it is alleged a trust fund known as “The Trustee for LEGAL SERVICES TRUST” belonging to AUL Law, a small legal practice based in Perth, was used as the collection point for Porter’s secret donations.
We can now also reveal more details about how and for what reasons the trust was allegedly originally set up for in 2018.
It is alleged AUL Law principal, Archana Uchit Luktuke, set up the trust on behalf of disgraced lawyer, convicted perjurer and acquitted wife murderer, Lloyd Rayney, after he received a notification from the WA Legal Practitioners Board to begin suspension of his legal registration for alleged perjury three years ago. Rayney is a former Crown Prosecutor in WA and was a prominent barrister in that state for many yeas.
The notification was received by Rayney on January 25, 2018 with “The Trustee for LEGAL SERVICES TRUST” then coming to be registered by AUL Law just days later, on January 29, 2018.
Luktuke would not answer questions from True Crime News Weekly about her relationship with Rayney.
When contacted on three occasions by True Crime News Weekly in September, Luktuke first refused to answer any of our questions sent by email and text message and then hung up in a panic when we called her work phone number.
She then later screamed and threatened True Crime News Weekly if we revealed any information about what she claimed was her “family trust”.
AUL Law principal, Archana Uchit Luktuke, first hung up and then screamed at and threatened True Crime News Weekly after we asked questions on possible links to “alleged rapist” Christian Porter. She would not answer questions about her relationship to disgraced lawyer Lloyd Rayney (Image: AUL Law / Supplied)
Following our initial investigation in September, Luktuke has not followed through with her threats in the slightest however she did publish a hastily written denial on her law firm’s website after our article went viral. However, we have not even received one email or phone call asking for an apology or retraction over our reporting. Luktuke failed to respond to further questions sent by True Crime News Weekly to her this for this follow-up investigation, including questions about her relationship with Rayney.
Rayney was eventually found not guilty in November 2012 of murdering his wife, Corryn, who worked as a WA Supreme Court registrar before her death. Following multiple hearings and appeals however, Rayney was later found, in April 2020, to have committed what would be considered acts of coercive control by secretly recording his wife’s telephone conversations and also having lied on the stand during his murder trial.
As such, he was soon after banned from ever practicing law after the WA Administrative Appeals Tribunal found Rayney engaged in “professional misconduct” and “knowingly giving false evidence”. On the night of his now-dead wife’s murder in August 2007, the couple had arranged to meet up as it was the deadline for Rayney – a heavy gambler – to provide financial records that Corryn has been seeking for a while as they tried to avoid a messy divorce battle in the Family Court.
Rayney is now very much the definition of a disgraced lawyer, all thanks to his own actions.
Porter and Rayney meanwhile happen to also be close, having worked together for years in the Western Australia DPP.
Rayney’s murder trial was held in Perth during Porter’s reign as Western Australia’s Attorney-General. In what some claim was a move to hobble the WA Police’s investigation into Rayney, Porter remarkably allowed for Rayney to not have to experience a a jury trial, with the case being heard in front of a single judge instead.
In a bid to give the trial a whiff of independence and not prejudice it, Porter decreed that a judge from outside Western Australia would be brought in. He then got Supreme Court judge, Brian Martin, from the Northern Territory to preside over Rayney’s murder trial, which ran over three months in 2012.
Information provided to True Crime News Weekly though suggests Porter and the judge had been known to each other for years, going back to their membership of the exclusive private men’s organisation, the Weld Club, that caters to Establishment figures in Perth.
Meanwhile, the highly litigious Rayney has been back in court just this very month arguing that the $2.5 million he was awarded in damages from a defamation case he brought against WA Police after they publicly named him as their “prime and only suspect” over his wife’s 2007 murder should be doubled to $5 million.
True Crime News Weekly sent a series of written questions to a business email address linked to Rayney about his possible links to “The Trustee for LEGAL SERVICES TRUST” and his relationship to AUL Law principal, Archana Uchit Luktuke, as well as asking whether he provided money for Porter’s slush fund. We also contacted a representative for Rayney by phone over three days. We did not receive a response to any of our queries.
Disgraced lawyer Lloyd Rayney – found guilt of perjury and engaging in the coercive control of his murdered wife, Corryn, by secretly taping her phone conversations – has a long history with Christian Porter going back to their legal career days in Perth (Image: ABC / Supplied)
Just last week however, in a move that has not been seen in 120 years of life in the Federal Parliament, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his loyal LNP foot soldiers bullied and voted down their own Liberal Speaker, Tony Smith, from referring to a parliamentary inquiry the question of whether Porter’s slush fund adhered to proper standards.
Even conservative media commentators such as Nikki Savva have since said the identities of the donors to the slush fund must be highly embarrassing for Porter and Morrison.
As the Federal Parliament has been hobbled to do its job, it is in the clear public interest for True Crime News Weekly to ask just exactly who else are Morrison, Porter and their acolytes so eagerly protecting from being revealed as some of the “alleged rapist’s” key secret sponsors.
There has been widespread speculation that a number of mega-wealthy individuals and entrenched members of Australia’s dopey and dastard Establishment have all chipped in to kindly, and secretly, pay Porter’s legal fees.
There is a precedent for such a very thing occurring in recent times, with PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel funding former wrestler Hulk Hogan’s defamation case against US news site Gawker; not because he loved the Hulk, but because he hated Gawker. True Crime News Weekly suggests something similar has occurred in Porter’s case, with many secretly donating to his slush fund due to their hatred for the ABC.
As such True Crimes News Weekly reached out on various occasions to a multitude of powerful figures to pose the simple question: “Do you know anything about the ‘anonymous’ donations funding Christian Porter’s blind trust?”
Below are a list of powerful individuals and their responses … or lack thereof.
Our first port of call was mining magnate and Australia’s wealthiest person, Gina Rinehart. In 2006, the billionaire hired Rayney, the now disgraced lawyer and friend of Porter, to work for her.
Gina Rinehart who has threatened to sue True Crimes News Weekly in the past for defamation has remained silent on questions of being an alleged secret donor to Porter’s slush fund after being contacted on a number of occasions.
Her earlier defamation threats made against True Crime News Weekly in 2019 have also led nowhere. Nor have we been contacted by Rinehart in regards to any further action over those particular matters where we truthfully reported on an alleged cover-up over the mysterious suicide death of one of her family’s bodyguards, who also happened to be a director of the notorious Paladin Group that was given hundreds of millions of dollars by then Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton from 2017 onwards to shoddily run refugee concentration camps on PNG’s Manus Island.
It is a matter of public record Rinehart likes her ‘pet boy’ politicians. Who can ever forget her oversized novelty cheque worth $40,000 she handed in 2017 to the toxic drunkard and alleged serial sexual harasser, Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce. While Rinehart believes ordinary Australian workers deserve to earn only $2 an hour, perhaps she felt the “alleged rapist” Porter deserved more?
Tom Chesson is another public figure closely linked to and invested in conservative politics who also provided no response surrounding his possible involvement with the trust. Chesson happens to be close friends to key sponsors for the Liberal Party, however he too has avoided any and all questioning.
The Institute of Public Affairs – which has a stated public goal to destroy the ABC as this nation’s public broadcaster – and who are known to have funded the notorious paedophile enabler and alleged paedophile George Pell’s legal fees have also remained silent on the matter when questions have been posed of them by True Crime News Weekly.
Fortescue Metals boss, Andrew Forrest, has meanwhile claimed to have absolutely nothing to do with the Trust and denies any and all involvement with anyone choosing to fund the case. A spokesperson for Forrest candidly opened up to True Crimes News Weekly, stating: “I can confirm categorically that neither Andrew Forrest or any entity associated with Dr Forrest has provided any funding toward Christian Porter’s legal bills.”
Australian businessman and former CEO of Western Mining Corporation and former Reserve Bank of Australia board member, Hugh Morgan, is another particularly powerful individual True Crimes News Weekly contacted incessantly for a statement regarding possible donations to the trust, however we were provided with nothing but radio silence.
Visy box empire supremo, Anthony Pratt, too has also remained silent on the matter, despite multiple attempts True Crimes News Weekly provided for the billionaire to issue a clear denial.
Channel Seven owner, Kerry Stokes – who has recently used company funds to financially back military meathead Ben Roberts-Smith in his ongoing defamation battle against the Nine Network over its reporting of allegations of murder and war crimes – has stated to True Crimes News Weekly that he has had nothing to do with Christian Porter’s legal bills, nor has he any association with anyone involved.
His lawyer, prominent Channel Seven multimillionaire legal eagle, Bruce McWilliam, however provided no response when we reached out to him.
Porter has stated that no media outlet has allowed him the chance to respond to allegations, however when contacted by True Crimes News Weekly for this story, providing him with an opportunity to speak his truth, he remained silent.
Porter was similarly quiet when True Crime News Weekly left messages at his Perth electorate office in mid-September after we initially reported on the existence of the “The Trustee for LEGAL SERVICES TRUST”.
Furthermore, there has been no response from any representative for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to deny his own involvement or the Liberal Party’s involvement in splashing cash into Porter’s slush fund.
In defending Porter after the existence of his slush fund came into view in September, Morrison personally claimed that no taxpayer dollars were spent in the coverage of Porter’s slush fund.
Such a claim turned our heads also into the direction of Morrison’s so-called “spiritual mentor” Brian Houston, the founder of the Hillsong Church.
Hillsong evangelical church pastor and Scott Morrison’s “spiritual mentor”, Brian Houston, who is currently facing criminal charges for covering up for his paedophile rapist father, would not say whether he or Hillsong gave money to Christian Porter’s slush fund (Image: Twitter / Supplied)
Currently facing serious criminal charges for covering up for his paedophile father, Houston is an individual who happens to have close ties to Morrison. When the question of Porter’s slush fund was put forward to Houston and Hillsong, True Crimes News Weekly heard nothing but an ungodly silence, despite continuous follow ups. It is a well-known fact that Hillsong doesn’t pay a cent towards taxation and therefore when Scott Morrison stated that, “No taxpayer dollars would be spent on the trust,” he might not have been completely fabricating things, as is his usual want.
Generous donations from a wealthy establishment that protects from inside the conservatorship of its members would happily donate to Porter if it meant that their reputation and ties to himself and the Prime Minister weren’t tarnished in any way shape or form.
We have however left our most shocking, but perhaps not so surprising, revelation until last.
It has been alleged that another secret donor to Porter’s slush fund is none other powerful News Corp journalist and prominent bore from The Australian newspaper, its editor-at-large, Paul Kelly.
A loyal Murdoch minion, practicing Catholic and public defender of the paedophile-plagued Catholic Church hierarchy, it is further alleged Kelly donated to former Cardinal George Pell’s defence fund when he was up on multiple charges of raping two boys, and which he only beat after the High Court overturned two previous guilty findings.
The Australian newspaper editor-at-large Paul Kelly’s ‘greatest hits’ on the rape accusations facing Christian Porter (Image: The Australian / Supplied)
Paul Kelly: Editor-at-large with The Australian, wrote three articles in three days defending Christian Porter (Image: The Australian / Supplied)
Elena Douglas: Said to believe “a gross injustice” has been done to Christian Porter. Ms Douglas is a godmother to one of Porter’s children and is the current partner of prominent News Corp journalist, Paul Kelly (Image: The Knowledge Society / Supplied)
True Crime News Weekly has been informed Kelly’s partner, Elena Douglas, who he has been with for at least the past two years, is actually a godmother to one of Porter’s children from one of his previous marriages.
Douglas, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of consulting group The Knowledge Society, is said to have been overheard in a shared office claiming that “a gross injustice” had been done to Porter around the time the “alleged rapist” launched his defamation suit against the ABC.
When contacted on numerous occasions about claims he too was alleged to be one of the ‘anonymous’ donors to Porter’s slush fund, Kelly provided no response to True Crime News Weekly surrounding his involvement. Douglas too has remained silent in the face of our questioning.
In the same week Porter first confirmed he was the Cabinet Minister at the centre of Ms Milligan’s ABC investigation in early March, Kelly wrote and published no less than three articles for The Australian strongly defending Porter.
They were variously headlined or tagged: ‘Rape trial by media is a threat to justice‘, ‘The rape accusation is now politically weaponised‘ and ‘The pile-on over Christian Porter will prove to be the defining test of Scott Morrison’.
Strong words, indeed.
It has been said Porter was aiming to raise close to $1 million for his slush fund, but he only sadly received closer to $500,000 in total after the metaphorical hat was passed around Perth’s and Australia’s Establishment.
Jo Dyer, a friend of Porter’s alleged rape victim, has in the past week stated publicly on social media: “Let’s stop referring to Mr Porter’s benefactors as anonymous. They’re not anonymous – they’re secret. However (im)plausible the deniability, quite a few people know who they are. Just not the Australian public.”
The question then remains for Morrison, Porter and the other hideous political creatures that inhabit Australia’s most corrupt federal government in history.
If no tax-payer dollars were paid, yet politicians legally cannot accept funds or gifts over the value of $300, who is lying here? And why can’t the Australian public be made aware of those who fight to conceal political discretion in return for possible future political favours? There are even more ‘secret donors’ who inhabit Australia’s Establishment, which we have not listed in this investigation, who gave to money to Porter’s slush fund. Who knows that they wanted in return?
What has happened to Australian democracy, you may ask. We’re sad to say, it’s probably long gone. We’re now a kleptocracy that protects and funds alleged rapists. All under Prime Minister’s Scott Morrison’s watch. We shouldn’t be so surprised it’s all happened while the nation is being led by a man who requires “empathy training”, which is only usually offered to certified psychopaths and narcissists.
How long may such a torrid, tawdry situation be left to continue will be up to all Australians, including the corporate media and the Federal Parliament, over coming weeks.
It was former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, a Liberal leader no less, who in his later days said: “Secrecy is completely inadequate for democracy but totally appropriate for tyranny. If the minister will not inform the public, then we are within our rights to assume the worst”.
***...so there you go...(wow, what a roller-coaster!-Ed)...indeed, I'm not sure exactly how many people they have working on this, but there's a shreck-load of work here...anyhoos, we'll be back...
Tomorrow: Mt Gambier City Council Corruptionings
We haven't really been here for a while, but there's plenty to cover...(I see they're still saying that the Farcical Aquatic Recreation Centre (FARC) is 'only' $57million-Ed)...when it's already been exposed as costing minimum of $64m already...(indeed, and that's if you discount the rumours/allegations floating 'round town that there's been yet more money 'secretly' gifted/granted to MGCC for the project, and that the real cost is now over $70m-Ed)...well, more like nearing $80m is what I heard, as a final 'cost'...(which means that Mt Gambier Ratepayers are on the hook for what, $45m-$55m?-Ed)...yeah, somewhere in that ballpark...anyhoos, tomorrow...
I am Nick Fletcher and this is my blog...cheers and laters...
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