‘I didn’t help him’: This former Sydney council contractor denies tweaking quotes for mate

“I was probably asking him if he put everything in the quote … if he forgot anything.”

The inquiry heard many individual items in GWAC’s quote were cheaper than those in another quote Cossu had received from another company, Steelbiz. Cossu denied he had told Clarke which figures to include to “undercut” the rival quote.

Huxley said: “It just happens that the figures he nominates in his quote are slightly cheaper than the figures Steelbiz nominates in its quote?”

Cossu replied: “It looks like it.”

GWAC was later awarded the contract for the cooling tower works on Cossu’s recommendation.

Asked whether he told anyone on the council he had helped Clarke prepare the quote, he said: “No because I didn’t help him.”

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Cossu said he was “sure” he would have disclosed his long-standing friendship with Clarke to the council at the time and he “was not keeping [it] as a secret”. He described him as “a very good man”.

Giving evidence last week, Jeremy Clarke was asked whether Cossu told him he would help Clarke win contracts with the council. Clarke said he had been “looking for [Cossu] to help me”.

“I hadn’t dealt with local government before, so, you know, I was obviously hoping that his guidance would help me to get work within the council.”

In cross-examination on Friday, barrister Arthur Moses, SC, asked Clarke whether Cossu had changed some of the draft quotes he prepared for council jobs so that Cossu “could get his cut of the action”.

“That’s basically it, isn’t it? I mean let’s be blunt about it rather than dancing around the edges,” Moses said.

Clarke replied: “I assume that was what he was doing, yes.”

The inquiry has previously been told Cossu and Webb, who was manager of the council’s works and projects unit, had supplied about 26 subcontractors to work on council projects via two recruitment agencies, Randstad and Spinifex Recruiting, but paid them significantly less than they billed the council between 2020 and 2022.

The agencies paid PMLV more than $7 million for the subcontractors, but PMLV paid the workers only about $2.6 million, netting the duo’s company a potential profit of about $4 million.

Webb will provide evidence later this week.

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