Steve Barrett and the Plutus Payroll saga: Veteran journo’s fight to clear name in ‘incorrect’ court call

It took a six-year legal fight for veteran news reporter Steve Barrett to finally get an “absurd” charge of blackmail against him dropped.

But nearly three years later, the award-winning journo is facing yet another legal nightmare after he was “outed as a crook” despite never being convicted of a crime.

The extraordinary scenario unfolded after Mr Barrett was “incorrectly” named in a NSW Supreme Court judgement as being part of a criminal conspiracy to commit blackmail – and it was repeated in a widely-read Australian law journal article.

Only he wasn’t. The charge had been formally withdrawn in 2023.

“This is dangerous and there needs to be urgent accountability,” Mr Barrett said.

“The case against me was flawed from the start and it keeps getting worse. An inquiry is needed beginning with the unproven lies put before the courts that keep on growing and getting repeated as fact.”

And he warned it could, and has, happened to others.

NSW criminal lawyer Sam Macedone said the consequences for Barrett have been devastating.

“Given he (Mr Barrett) was outed as a convicted offender with two other convicted persons in a blackmail case (as per the court judgement) when in fact he was never convicted and therefore innocent – he was in effect labelled as a convicted criminal,” Mr Macedone said.

Mr Barrett only discovered he was being named as a blackmailer when a legal publication, Lawyers Weekly, published a story about moves by the Council of the Law Society of NSW to disbar Sevag Chalabian – a Sydney solicitor jailed for laundering $24 million obtained in a blackmail scheme linked to the infamous Plutus Payroll tax fraud – and included Mr Barrett’s name as one of the blackmailers.

Mr Barrett’s name had been included in a judgement about the Chalabian case. However, that inclusion was made before the charge against Mr Barrett had been withdrawn. The judgement was never amended and had remained publicly available. To make matters worse, the judgement was subsequently relied on in a submission by The Council for the Law Society to the NSW Supreme Court of Appeal to apply for Chalabian to be disbarred.

Unlike cases where court judgements are appealed and there is a notation added to the judgement notifying the reader of separate or updated proceedings, the withdrawing or dropping of a charge is not automatically noted in related documents.

The blackmail charge against Mr Barrett followed his 2017 investigations into the $105 million Plutus Payroll taxation fraud – widely recognised as the biggest white-collar fraud in the history of the Australian Tax Office.

Mr Barrett was tipped off about the story by Daniel Hausman, a man he had met briefly some years before.

However, Mr Barrett was unaware that Hausman and another man - Daniel Rostankovski - were actually blackmailing the Plutus Payroll fraudsters, threatening them with public exposure through the oblivious long-time reporter’s work - unless they paid up millions.

Mr Barrett always maintained he knew nothing about the blackmail. The Australian Federal Police initially acknowledged in writing he was not part of the blackmail conspiracy, before backflipping and charging him.

Hausman admitted under oath during Mr Barrett’s trial that he lied to the reporter to get him interested in the story. He also conceded that he never mentioned the blackmail plan because he knew Mr Barrett would not get involved if he knew the truth.

Mr Barrett’s trial in 2021 resulted in a hung jury. Moves for a second trial were abandoned after Mr Barrett’s lawyer Dr Greg Woods KC successfully argued there was no direct evidence that the journo was a party to the joint criminal enterprise alleged, other than from the lips of the convicted blackmailer Hausman … “a proven fraudster and prodigious liar.”

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) dropped the charge after Dr Woods also argued that any further pursuit of Mr Barrett using the witness Daniel Hausman — a serial, practised and habitual liar — would be an “affront to justice” and would “bring the administration of the legal system into disrepute.” The Supreme Court formally dismissed the case in July 2023.

After six years the fight to clear his name was over.

Yet the damage didn’t end there.

After the article was published, lawyers for Mr Barrett contacted Lawyers Weekly and The Council for the Law Society to ask for a rectification. Technically it is up to the parties involved in the court proceedings to request changes from the court – in this case it was the Law Society and also Chalabian.

Lawyers Weekly has not responded to The Nightly’s numerous requests for comment.

After the Law Society failed to respond to Mr Barrett’s lawyers, who were also unable to contact Chalabian, the reporter’s legal team was forced to go to the NSW Supreme Court to ask for a modification because of the “likelihood” of other media organisations publishing similar statements.

The court agreed to amend the Chalabian judgement to remove Mr Barrett’s name and replace it with a reference to a “Mr X.”

But that fix fell short. Mr Macedone said the anonymisation doesn’t work given the fact that anyone familiar with the case can still identify Barrett.

“This has caused him irreparable damage, and the Supreme Court of NSW should undertake an internal inquiry to establish how this could have happened and make rules so it doesn’t happen again. In South Australia recently the Court apologised to a person they wrongly labelled.”

Recent searches have revealed the problem is much more widespread, with Mr Barrett being “labelled as a criminal” in at least four other NSW Supreme Court judgements. None of those four judgements have been corrected at the time of publication.

A media spokesperson for the NSW Supreme Court said judgements are written about a case at a particular point in time. References to Mr Barrett in earlier judgements relate to the Crown case before the charges against him were withdrawn.

“It is clear from subsequent judgements that he was not ultimately convicted, and given he is not a party to any of those judgements, they do not constitute findings against him. But there is the burden on to the reader to make further enquiries.”

However, he said “If Mr Barrett wishes to have a notation made at the end of a judgement, then he may make an application to the Court.”

A spokesperson for The Law Society of NSW said they had nothing to add to the statement from the Supreme Court, but also added that Mr Barrett had the option to make an application to the Court for a notation to be added to the judgement.

Mr Barrett said he doesn’t believe it should be up to him to hunt for incorrect references in court documents and ask for changes.

“I have suffered enough through this whole legal saga,” he said.

Barrister Margaret Cunneen SC said “The Court, having been apprised of the oversight in its reporting of cases, ought to act immediately to redress the errors. The charge against Mr Barrett was always absurd, given his background of journalism which always supported the exposure and effective prosecution of real criminals.”

In a strikingly similar case in South Australia, the Chief Judge of the District Court apologised to a couple who had initially been charged with blackmailing the Premier Peter Malinauskus. While the charge was subsequently dropped, it was reported publicly that the pair had been found guilty as a result of the court’s failure to update its records.

The Chief Judge ordered an inquiry into the error which incorrectly recorded a guilty finding in the dismissed blackmail case against former Labor MP Annabel Digance and her husband Greg Digance.

Mr Barrett is still waiting for an apology.