Eddie Obeid arrives at court
Eddie Obeid arrives at Supreme Court in February ahead of his criminal trial over Circular Quay cafe leases.
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A High Court battle, surprise evidence about envelopes of cash, and an aborted trial: the twists and turns in the Obeid legal saga were kept from the jury.
![Eddie Obeid leaves court on Tuesday after being found guilty.](/web/20160629060600im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/p/t/o/e/r/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gpo8i1.png/1467108483841.jpg)
Eddie Obeid leaves court on Tuesday after being found guilty. Photo: Ben Rushton
Fairfax Media can now reveal the legal wranglings behind the scenes that delayed Obeid's conviction, and the evidence that derailed his first trial.
Lawyers for the corrupt former Labor kingpin worked furiously to shut down the trial, originally slated to begin on October 19 last year.
In January, after the trial had been moved to February 10 owing to preliminary legal battles, Obeid asked the High Court to delay the trial yet again.
![A jury found Eddie Obeid guilty after a three-week trial.](/web/20160629060600im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/p/t/o/f/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gpo8i1.png/1467108483841.jpg)
A jury found Eddie Obeid guilty after a three-week trial. Photo: Ben Rushton
His lawyers had advanced the surprising argument that the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to hear a misconduct in public office case.
They said only the NSW Parliament – specifically the upper house, where Obeid warmed the red leather benches for 20 years – could determine the case.
They also argued Obeid, an upper house MP, did not hold "public office" for the purpose of the offence of misconduct in public office, and accordingly he could not stand trial for the offence.
Those arguments were rejected by the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. Obeid's defence team sought a High Court order temporarily delaying the trial pending the court's decision on whether to grant special leave to appeal on the legal points.
High Court Justice Stephen Gageler rejected the application on January 19. He said Obeid could agitate those legal arguments "if he were convicted at trial and unsuccessful in any subsequent appeal against conviction".
This was not the end of the legal dramas. Obeid's first trial ran for just nine days before it was aborted on February 24 after surprise evidence came to light.
In a bizarre twist, Paul Maroon, a cousin of Obeid's wife, Judith, volunteered damning financial records in the witness box which suggested Obeid himself received envelopes of cash marked "Dad" from the takings of two Circular Quay cafes.
The evidence had never before come to light. Maroon said he found the records over the weekend when searching his computer.
The defence had been at pains to distance Obeid from any direct financial benefit from the cafes at the time he was lobbying a senior maritime authority bureaucrat, Steve Dunn, in 2007 to benefit the businesses.
Justice Robert Beech-Jones discharged the jury and the second trial started on June 6.
The jury was not told about the earlier trial, nor that the case had its genesis in an Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry.
The ICAC had made corrupt conduct findings in June 2014 not only against Obeid but also his former Labor ally, Joe Tripodi, and maritime bureaucrat Steve Dunn.
Tripodi was expelled from the Labor Party over the finding. He was found to have "deliberately failed to disclose" the Obeids' interest in the cafes from his cabinet colleague.
Dunn was found to have acted corruptly by making decisions to benefit the Obeids.
The evidence that emerged at the trial was starkly different. The Crown case was that Tripodi was not told of the Obeids' interest in the cafes, and Dunn was also "duped".
Obeid's conviction for misconduct in public office, nine years after the time of the offence, is unlikely to be the end of the legal battles.
An appeal against conviction is almost certainly in the works.