Former NSW minister Eddie Obeid was denied procedural fairness at an anti-corruption body hearing which found he acted corruptly over the granting of a coal exploration licence, a judge has been told.
His barrister Robert Newlinds SC referred to two confidential government maps claimed to have been seized from an Obeid family office during the execution of a search warrant relating to the Operation Jasper inquiry.
He was opening the Obeid family's civil action on Tuesday before Justice David Hammerschlag in the NSW Supreme Court, in a packed courtroom which included dozens of lawyers.
The Obeids accuse the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), its former commissioner David Ipp, former counsel assisting Geoffrey Watson SC and other former officers of misfeasance in public office.
The two maps played a part in ICAC findings relating to the issuing of a coal mining exploration licence on Obeid family land at Mount Penny in the Bylong Valley near Mudgee.
ICAC found the licence enabled the Obeid family to make $30 million.
Mr Newlinds said the star witness, investment banker Gardner Brook, told ICAC one of the Obeid "boys" showed him one of the maps.
But Obeid family members testified to not having seen them.
Mr Newlinds said some sort of "deal" or agreement was reached between ICAC and Mr Brooke that "he would be a witness for them".
This meant there was an understanding between them that ICAC would "go easy on him" if he gave evidence consistent with their theory "that the Obeids were people who were corrupt", he said.
The hearing is set down for 19 days, potentially coinciding with a sentence hearing scheduled for Obeid in the Supreme Court on August 12.
The one-time Labor powerbroker, 72, has been found guilty of wilful misconduct in public office in 2007.
The jury found he lobbied a senior public servant about lucrative retail leases at Sydney's Circular Quay, without revealing his family's stake in the outlets.
Mr Newlinds said the two maps were not listed in various ICAC documents listing items seized in the raid.
But when they were listed as being found in a folder in the office, the folder had been out of the ICAC vault and on a person's desk for six days.
Material which was "relevant, significant and adverse to the Obeids' case" had not been disclosed to them, Mr Newlinds added.
All of the defendants have denied the Obeid claims.
