A Tokyo court has ordered $413,000 be paid to the WA government from the frozen assets of a corrupt public servant.
Craig Peacock spent 17 years running the state government’s office in Japan before the Corruption and Crime Commission exposed how he “double-dipped” on expenses and reimbursed himself for memberships of exclusive Tokyo clubs.
Mr Peacock was also embroiled in the imfamous 2015 “soapland” massage saga, in which he arranged for two visiting WA Liberal MPs to spend time at a bathhouse in Japan’s capital.
Those revelations led to a long fight between the CCC and the Parliament over access to one of the politician’s laptops.
In 2019, Attorney General John Quigley vowed to recover as much as $500,000 which Mr Peakcock had misappropriated over his career.
“The money went from this jurisdiction into his trouser pocket,” Mr Quigley said at the time.
After initially signing a deed of settlement with the state government, Mr Peacock challenged the agreement.
The High Court of Tokyo dismissed his appeal last month.
“As Mr Peacock had no identifiable assets in Australia, the state successfully applied to the Tokyo District Court to have the Australian judgment recognised in Japan,” State Development Minister Roger Cook told Parliament on Tuesday.
“The Japanese court held a distribution hearing and determined the state be allocated $413,310.64.”
The CCC discovered that Mr Peacock had crashed his government car in Tokyo after drinking and driving, but failed to report the incident.
His actions were described by the CCC as a “pattern of corrupt behaviour and betrayal of trust that continued unchecked for at least a decade and cost WA taxpayers in excess of $500,000”.
