The husband of a training company director being investigated for allegedly scamming $1.8 million in Victorian government subsidies has admitted he fraudulently filled out student forms.
Malcolm Kellas told an Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) hearing on Thursday he was paid $1000 a week for a "couple of hours a day" helping his wife's company, TayTell, with basic administration tasks.
He confessed to lying on enrolment and assessment forms, including his own, to "create a false and misleading impression" they were authentic documents.
TayTell director Rebecca Taylor is being investigated for suspicious conduct after making deals with South West TAFE and Bendigo Kangan Institute to deliver and assess students in a Certificate IV in engineering.
The students were employees of Zinfra and Jetstar respectively, companies where Ms Taylor had friends and contacts.
Each student was worth $14,000 in government subsidies to TayTell, which allegedly was not qualified and did not deliver the 1400 training hours required or assess the students for competency.
Also on Tuesday, former Jetstar manager Margaret Jarvie said she was enrolled as a Zinfra employee in the Certificate IV even though she didn't work for the company at the time.
She admitted to declaring on her enrolment form that she had no previous qualifications so she would be eligible for a government subsidy, which would be paid to Ms Taylor.
Tapped phone calls between Ms Jarvie and Ms Taylor allegedly getting their story straight were played before the hearing.
"What was my project? Um, oh, my project was to do with the um, consistency - consistent approach in all of the, um - um, what were they? Substations," Ms Jarvie was recorded saying to Ms Taylor.
Phone calls were also played of Ms Jarvie seeming to panic about her handwriting and the handwriting in the workbooks being inconsistent.
Counsel assisting, Ian Hill, said the conversations were attempts by the two women to align their stories.
"This is all part of you and her putting together a story to tell the IBAC investigators," he said.
Ms Jarvie admitted her assessment documents were "quite fictitious" when questioned by Mr Hill.
Commissioner Stephen O'Bryan separately warned both Ms Jarvie and Mr Kellas of perjury, encouraging them to tell the truth to avoid possible jail time, after they appeared reluctant to answer questions.
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