The Fake Assistant named 'Jessica': What's Going On at NSW's Anti-Corruption Hearings

A consultant told NSW's anti-corruption watchdog that a now-closed lobbying firm invented a fake office assistant named "Jessica" to sign off on bills sent to a Catholic education body. The evidence came as the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) entered its third week of hearings in an investigation called Operation Rosny.

ICAC is a government body that investigates corruption in New South Wales. Jeremy Greenwood, appearing for his second day of questioning before lawyer Peggy Dwyer SC, said the name "Jessica" was made up by his Beckington co-founder Christian Ellis, whom Greenwood described as treating it as a joke. Dwyer read out 2020 emails from Beckington to Catholic Schools NSW that included bills signed "Kind regards, Jessica" (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).

Operation Rosny began public hearings on 27 July 2026. It is looking into whether a group of Christians inside the Liberal Party, known as the Reformers, sought or accepted political donations from people who are banned by law from making them. This ban exists because NSW law says certain people and organisations are not allowed to give money to political parties, to reduce the risk of corruption. ICAC is also separately examining whether Greenwood himself sought or accepted political donations, including from banned donors, which could amount to offences under the Electoral Funding Act (ICAC).

The inquiry is looking at whether Beckington, set up by Greenwood and Ellis in 2019, took payments for behind-the-scenes political work by sending fake bills to a banned donor named Michael O'Hara and to Catholic Schools NSW. O'Hara has admitted to paying Beckington for Liberal Party factional work using fake bills but argues these were not political donations (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).

Greenwood's reliability as a witness came into question when Dwyer showed him a contradiction between what he said in the public hearing and what he had said earlier in a private, legally required questioning session. Greenwood had previously stated he had not heard of O'Hara before ICAC's inquiry was announced. On Tuesday, he admitted he had first heard O'Hara's name in 2019 or 2020 (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).

The hearing also looked at payments to Jean-Claude Perrottet, the younger brother of former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet. Dominic Perrottet is not named in ICAC's allegations. Greenwood said he believed Beckington had made payments to Jean-Claude Perrottet and then acknowledged a payment of $12,000. Greenwood said the payment was not for recruitment work, telling the inquiry: "I didn't care about the recruitment work. I felt for him. He wanted to get married. He didn't have a job." He was then shown a bill from Jean-Claude Perrottet to Beckington for $5,500 in consulting fees and said, as far as he knew, he was not aware of Jean-Claude Perrottet doing any consulting work for the company (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).

Greenwood was asked whether Beckington had paid Reformers members to do factional work. He said he could not recall. On the previous day, he had called the Reformers faction "toxic" (ABC News, 10 August 2026) and told the commission it did not have a "shred of evidence" against him regarding the allegations (The Guardian, 10 August 2026).

Christian Ellis moved to the UK at the start of the year. The inquiry heard that he has declined to give spoken evidence, though Greenwood said on Monday that his friend did want to give evidence. The next morning, Ellis messaged Greenwood at 6am on Signal, an app that encrypts messages so they cannot be easily read by others, asking what the reaction was to Greenwood saying Ellis wanted to appear (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).

The broader context here is a pile of disclosure problems. The fake assistant, the conflicting stories about when Greenwood first learned of a key banned donor, the gap between payments he acknowledged and bills for services he says did not happen, and the Signal exchange between co-founders all point to the central question Operation Rosny must answer: whether money paid to Beckington was for real work done, or whether it was political donations disguised as business fees using fake paperwork. The distinction matters because NSW law prohibits certain donors from making political contributions, and whether these payments are legally classed as donations or commercial fees will likely determine whether any laws were broken.

ICAC's broader role also includes educating public sector workers about preventing corruption, through conferences, outreach programs, short courses, and free workshops for NSW government agencies and public officials (ICAC). That educational function operates alongside the commission's investigative work, though the two are kept separate in practice.