Fake Assistant 'Jessica,' Conflicting Testimony, and Encrypted Messages: Inside ICAC's Operation Rosny
A consultant told NSW's anti-corruption watchdog that a now-closed lobbying firm co-founded by members of a Christian Liberal factional group invented a fake administrative assistant named "Jessica" to sign off on invoices sent to a Catholic education body, as the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) heard its third week of evidence in Operation Rosny.
Jeremy Greenwood, giving evidence for his second day before counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer SC, testified that the name "Jessica" was created by his Beckington co-founder Christian Ellis, whom Greenwood described as treating it as a joke. Dwyer read out 2020 correspondence from Beckington to Catholic Schools NSW that included invoices signed "Kind regards, Jessica" (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).
Operation Rosny began public hearings on 27 July 2026. It is investigating whether a Christian Liberal factional group known as the Reformers solicited or accepted prohibited donations — that is, political contributions from sources barred by law from making them — in connection with the recruitment or renewal of members to the Liberal Party. ICAC is separately examining whether Greenwood himself solicited or accepted political donations, including from prohibited donors, in possible offences under the Electoral Funding Act (ICAC).
The inquiry is scrutinising whether Beckington, set up by Greenwood and Ellis in 2019, accepted payments for factional work through fake invoices directed to a prohibited donor named Michael O'Hara and to Catholic Schools NSW. O'Hara has admitted to making payments to Beckington for factional Liberal work using fake invoices but disputes whether they amounted to political donations (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).
Greenwood's credibility became a live issue when Dwyer confronted him with a discrepancy between his public-hearing testimony and his earlier evidence at a compulsory examination — a private session where witnesses are legally required to answer questions. Greenwood had previously stated he had not heard of O'Hara before ICAC's inquiry was announced. On Tuesday, he admitted to having first heard O'Hara's name mentioned in 2019 or 2020 (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).
The hearing also explored 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 subsequently 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 an invoice to Beckington for consulting fees from Jean-Claude Perrottet for $5,500 and said, to the best of his knowledge, he was not aware of Jean-Claude Perrottet carrying out consulting work for the company (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).
Greenwood was pressed on whether Beckington had paid Reformers members to do factional work. He said he could not recall. On the previous day of evidence, he had labelled 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 under investigation (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 oral evidence, though Greenwood insisted on Monday that his friend did want to give evidence. The following morning, Ellis contacted Greenwood at 6am on the encrypted messaging app Signal, asking what the reaction was to Greenwood saying Ellis wanted to appear (The Guardian, 11 August 2026).
The broader context here is one of layered disclosure problems. The fictitious assistant, the conflicting accounts of when Greenwood first became aware of a key prohibited donor, the gap between payments acknowledged and corresponding invoices for services that Greenwood says did not occur, and the Signal exchange between co-founders all feed into the central question Operation Rosny must answer: whether payments to Beckington were genuine commercial transactions for services rendered or disguised political donations channelled through fabricated documentation. The distinction matters because NSW's Electoral Funding Act prohibits certain donors from making political contributions, and the legal characterisation of these payments — as donations or commercial fees — will likely determine whether offences have been established.
ICAC's broader institutional mandate includes corruption prevention education through conferences, outreach programs, senior executive short courses, and free interactive workshops for NSW public sector agencies and individual public officials (ICAC). That preventive function sits alongside the commission's investigative role, though the two are operationally distinct.
