Jailed accountant Vanda Gould has failed in a defamation lawsuit against the Australian taxation commissioner, Chris Jordan.
In the federal court, Gould, a Sydney-based accountant, had claimed that remarks Jordan made at the National Press Club in 2017 defamed him by painting him as having engaged in the worst kind of money laundering, insider trading and tax fraud.
On Friday federal court judge Richard White said Jordan’s remarks did defame Gould but the commissioner was entitled to make them because he was responding to attacks on him and the ATO by Gould and a lawyer who worked for companies linked to Gould.
Gould has always denied doing anything wrong in relation to his activities in setting up and helping run offshore structures for his clients, many of which involved an offshore provider featured in the Pandora papers, Asiaciti Trust.
He is currently in jail after being convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice by asking a witness to give false evidence during hearing of a tax liability lawsuit in 2013.
In that case, federal court judge Nye Perram found that Gould, in Sydney, secretly controlled a network of offshore companies including a Samoan company called Hua Wang Bank Berhad. Without making any findings as to wrongdoing, he referred the case to federal police, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for further investigation.
“The facts I have found strongly suggest widespread money laundering, tax fraud of the most serious kind and, possibly in some instances, insider trading,” Perram said in a December 2014 ruling.
“The conduct revealed in this case is disgraceful.”
At the Press Club appearance, Jordan referred to the Hua Wang Bank case, saying the court “referred the matter for money laundering, insider trading and tax evasion of the worst kind” and that the ruling had been “confirmed by the full federal court” and “confirmed by the high court”.
In the defamation case, he defended his statements as a fair report of a court proceeding.
White said this defence did not apply because Jordan’s remarks implied that Perram’s remarks about money laundering, tax fraud and insider trading had been endorsed by the full federal court and the high court when in fact they were not.
However, White found that Jordan’s remarks were protected by “qualified privilege” because he was entitled to defend himself from a series of public attacks by Gould and a barrister who worked for the companies in the Hua Wang Bank case, John Hyde Page.
These attacks were a 2013 Sydney Morning Herald article in which Hyde Page compared an ATO taskforce attempting to uncover hidden offshore wealth, Project Wickenby, to the Gestapo, an appearance by Hyde Page on the Alan Jones radio show the following year and testimony Gould gave to a parliamentary committee.
“On any reasonable view, each of these statements amounted to a significant criticism of the operations of the ATO and of some of its officers and, indirectly, of Mr Jordan as commissioner,” White said in his judgment.
“They called into public question the methods adopted in the administration and enforcement of the tax laws, the integrity of officers of the ATO, and the culture within the ATO.”
He rejected arguments from Gould’s counsel that the ATO had no reputation to protect because it was an arm of the government.
“In my view, it should be held that Mr Jordan did have the right and interest to respond to the attacks on the ATO,” he said.
“He is the senior taxation officer, with general responsibility for the administration of the taxation legislation.”
White also found that Jordan’s statements carried a broader meaning that Gould was dishonest – an allegation Jordan supported with 150 pages of allegations about the accountant’s behaviour.
“However, I note again that this conclusion is of no moment given my finding that Mr Jordan made the impugned statements on an occasion of qualified privilege,” he said.