An Australian federal police officer has told the New South Wales supreme court he “regrets” providing it with incorrect evidence as part of a bid to intervene in the sale of a property that would fund the ex-US military pilot Daniel Duggan’s legal costs.
The AFP applied on 31 October to have the multimillion-dollar property on the NSW south coast owned by Duggan’s wife, Saffrine, seized by the state under a foreign restraining order that was imposed by a US court early last month.
Duggan is being held in prison in NSW while he fights extradition to the US over charges of conspiracy, arms trafficking and money laundering relating to allegations he accepted cash to train Chinese military pilots more than a decade ago.
Saffrine had put the “Bundaleer” property in Saddleback Mountain, where she and her husband were building a house, on the market to help pay his lawyers before the AFP applied to seize it on behalf of the US.
Duggan’s lawyers are fighting in the NSW supreme court to overturn the restraining order, arguing it is in the “interests of justice” to prevent the property from being seized and to allow Saffrine to sell it.
They also say the property’s value far exceeds the amount of money that the US alleges are proceeds of Duggan’s alleged crimes.
It is still listed online, described as a partly completed luxury homestead on a 30-hectare (77-acre) block.
The AFP officer Simon Moore appeared before the NSW supreme court on Wednesday, where he was asked to explain why he had provided it with an affidavit in which he incorrectly named Duggan as the director of the company which owns the property.
The property is owned by Saffrine’s company, Power Art Trading, which is registered in Hong Kong. Saffrine is its sole director.
Under cross-examination by Duggan’s barrister, Gregory Jones, Moore said he had made an “error” and that he regretted it had occurred.
Moore acknowledged he obtained and reviewed a copy of Power Art Trading’s company extract – a type of document providing an official record of a company’s details including its directorship – on 1 November.
The court was told the extract showed Duggan was not the company’s director, but Moore said he did not the “make the connection” when he reviewed it.
The AFP did not notify the court of the error in Moore’s affidavit until after it received a letter from Duggan’s lawyers on 15 November alerting it to the inaccuracy.
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Jones also pressed Moore on why he had said in his first affidavit that an official in the federal attorney general’s department had informed him Duggan was Power Art Trading’s director and then in a later affidavit said he was not “informed by anyone”.
Jones said it was “a truly unacceptable sequence of events”. He said the court was not a “rubber stamp” for US authorities and called for the restraining order to be thrown out.
He argued that because Duggan was not the director of Power Art Trading he had no “link” to the Saddleback Mountain property.
Barrister Greg O’Mahoney, acting on behalf of the AFP commissioner, said Moore’s mistake was “innocent” and had not been “deliberate”.
He said there was no need for Duggan to be directly linked to the property under the mutual agreement Australia has with some foreign countries, including the US, about seizing proceeds of alleged crimes.
Justice Nicholas Chen reserved his decision on Wednesday.
Duggan, who is a naturalised Australian citizen, has consistently denied the allegations against him. But if convicted, the 55-year-old father of six faces up to 60 years in prison.
His extradition case is being heard separately and has been adjourned until next year.
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