Prosecutors will ask a Sydney court to send Frank Gigliotti to jail after he yesterday became the first former Wollongong councillor to be convicted of misleading the state's corruption watchdog.
Magistrate Carolyn Barkell found Gigliotti, 50, guilty of two counts of intentionally giving misleading evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption on August 1, 2008.
He was allowed to return to his Horsley home last night on bail, but the prosecution indicated it would seek a custodial sentence.
Gigliotti is the first person to be found guilty of criminal charges arising from the sensational ICAC inquiry that led to the sacking of Wollongong City Council, findings of corrupt conduct against 10 individuals and recommendations for 11 people to be prosecuted.
Last week, sacked Labor councillors Kiril Jonovski, 66, and Zeki Esen, 44, were cleared of all charges against them. Gigliotti was also found not guilty last week of giving misleading evidence to ICAC in February 2008.
Yesterday's guilty findings came just hours after Gigliotti's own solicitor, Matt Russoniello, told the Downing Centre Local Court that a claim Gigliotti made in a statutory declaration - which Gigliotti repeated at an ICAC compulsory examination - was untrue.
The statutory declaration, which Gigliotti made with the help of Wollongong Against Corruption member Vicki Curran, came to ICAC's attention in July 2008 after an Illawarra Mercury report.
In the statutory declaration, Gigliotti said he had met Wollongong MP Noreen Hay and developer Frank Vellar at Ms Hay's office in 2007.
Gigliotti had alleged in the declaration that Ms Hay asked him to lodge a rescission motion against the council's refusal of Mr Vellar's development application for the North Beach Bathers' Pavilion.
His statement said ICAC solicitor David Lusty rang Mr Russoniello in January 2008 and said to "tell Frank to come clean on Noreen Hay".
Gigliotti claimed in the declaration that he later rang Mr Lusty and advised him of the meeting with Ms Hay.
Mr Lusty yesterday gave evidence emphatically denying that he had told Mr Russoniello his client needed to "come clean" on Ms Hay.
When asked if Gigliotti had ever told him about the meeting with Ms Hay, Mr Lusty said "the conversation never took place".
"If Mr Gigliotti had provided the information ... it would have been of interest to ICAC and would have been relevant to a number of different lines we were pursuing," Mr Lusty said.
Mr Russoniello said he was overseas during January 2008 and never had the alleged conversation with Mr Lusty.
But he claimed Gigliotti had told him about the meeting with Ms Hay and he had advised his client to inform ICAC.
Gigliotti did not understand why he was not asked about Ms Hay at the February 2008 inquiry, Mr Russoniello said.
Gigliotti gave evidence yesterday that he had been "confused" when he made the statutory declaration on July 11, 2008.
He told the court he had personal issues, including his wife being ill with cancer and his mother being diagnosed with dementia.
Gigliotti repeatedly denied the statutory declaration was written to suggest the ICAC was corrupt.
Gigliotti said it was written for Greens MLC Sylvia Hale to table at a parliamentary inquiry into ICAC.
"I don't know what the word corrupt means," Gigliotti said.
In her judgment, Ms Barkell questioned Gigliotti's credibility, saying: "I am not satisfied that there is any basis on which I could believe any such conversation was true."
Gigliotti will be sentenced in November, after a hearing into a charge that he provided a false or misleading statement to an ICAC officer about a developer's claims a council employee had solicited a bribe.
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