ICAC under attack after Margaret Cunneen case

By all accounts Wednesday was a rollicking day for senior prosecutor Margaret Cunneen.

On the dot of 10am came the news of her legal team's stunning High Court victory against the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which was informed it had exceeded its powers in its planned public hearing into an allegation that Cunneen had attempted to pervert the course of justice.

On hearing the good news a jubilant party of about 30 family, friends, barristers and sporting figures gathered to celebrate at the historic Lord Nelson hotel in Sydney's Rocks.

One of those joining in the celebrations was Manly footballer Brett Stewart, a staunch supporter of Cunneen.

In 2010 the deputy senior Crown prosecutor testified to the rugby league star's impeccable character, telling a District Court jury he was "a gentleman ... [who was] refreshingly respectful towards females".

Stewart was acquitted of sexual assault.

Wednesday's celebrations later moved to the Windsor on the Park, a newly refurbished hotel owned by Ben and Simon Tilley, the half-brothers of Sophia Tilley.

The Tilley family, an Eastern suburbs institution, haven't seen so much drama since Sophia's maternal grandfather, illegal gambling identity Dick Reilly, was murdered in Double Bay.

Known as the baccarat king of Sydney, the 58-year-old was shot in the chest as he was getting into his luxury grey Maserati in Manning Road on an overcast winter's evening in June, 1967.

Nearly 50 years later, on a late May evening, 25-year-old Sophia Tilley was driving a Ford Mondeo owned by Cunneen when a pizza van crashed into her outside a Willoughby hotel, not far from the family home of her boyfriend Steve Wyllie, the son of Cunneen and her partner Greg Wyllie.

Five months later, shockwaves reverberated through the legal fraternity when ICAC issued the following brief statement.

"The ICAC is investigating allegations that on 31 May 2014 Deputy Senior Crown Prosecutor, Margaret Cunneen SC and Stephen Wyllie, with the intention to pervert the course of justice, counselled Sophia Tilley to pretend to have chest pains, and that Sophia Tilley, with the intention to pervert the course of justice, did pretend to have chest pains, to prevent investigating police officers from obtaining evidence of Tilley's blood alcohol level at the scene of a motor vehicle accident."

Cunneen told radio station 2GB that the most "fundamental fact" of the case was that after the accident, Tilley underwent a blood test at Royal North Shore Hospital and returned results of "zero, zero, zero".

"The police didn't speak to her at all [at the scene of the crash] so she didn't have a chance to tell the truth or any lies," she said.

She also told the radio station that following the crash, her son and Tilley's home was raided in the early hours of the morning, with no explanation given for the raid.

Apart from that briefest of descriptions in the initial ICAC release, no further details have been provided as to what exactly ICAC had and how it came by the information.

Cunneen was quick to blame her estranged sister Carol, who denied being the source of the complaint to ICAC. Carol Cunneen said she knew nothing about the matter until it hit the news in late October 2014. She also said that even if she did know anything about it, who would commence an investigation against a prominent silk based only on a second-hand account from a lowly clerk?

The puzzle appears to have been answered this week after a law enforcement officer confirmed that phone taps from a multi-agency task force had been supplied to the commission.

Cunneen said on Friday that Fairfax Media's suggestion that "it's anything to do with phone taps is a nonsense".

"I never spoke on the phone about this matter on that night [of the crash] at all, because Stephen rang his father about the accident and his father told me," she said.

However, even Cunneen's wide circle of friends acknowledges that the hard-partying barrister sometimes shows unconventional judgment.

In this case it appears that the target of the phone taps was her close friend, controversial gambling identity Steve Fletcher, for whom her son Steve worked.

The unlikely friendship first came to light after several people contacted Fairfax Media following a 2006 story about a massive betting plunge on a Newcastle Knights football match whereby Fletcher and brothel owner Eddie Hayson appeared to have inside information on key player Andrew Johns being injured. A claim they denied.

The two men had earlier been involved in the famous Queensland greyhound sting. Hayson placed two bets of almost $60,000 on a highly fancied dog, Lucy's Light, which was running in an unremarkable Gold Coast race with only five other runners. Only minutes before the race, Fletcher put $16,000 each on the other five runners which blew out the favourite's odds to $13. The sting netted the pair more than $700,000 when Lucy's Light won.

In 2011, following Fletcher's banning from racecourses for receiving inside information from a jockey, Fairfax Media asked Cunneen about the appropriateness of the friendship which was raising eyebrows in legal circles.

On that occasion she claimed she barely knew Fletcher and that her son Steve no longer worked for him because of Fletcher's disqualification, which was later overturned on appeal.

However, Fletcher said he was great mates with Cunneen and that he had seen her only the previous day when she had dropped her son Steve to work at Fletcher's premises.

"I am very careful never to break any laws or to be with people who do. I take that very, very seriously. Over the past 35 years I've made it my practice never to associate with people who are shady or dodgy," Cunneen said at the time.

This prompted a question as to whether one of the state's most senior prosecutors should attend the book launch of the state's most infamous police officer Roger Rogerson.

"Steve [Fletcher] wasn't there. But I know Roger independently. I've known him since he was a detective ... He was never convicted of anything while he was a police officer," she said.

She recently explained to The Australian newspaper she had gone to the launch because of an inspirational speech on the power of redemption by top public servant Michael Coutts-Trotter.

She said Coutts-Trotter, husband of federal MP Tanya Plibersek, spoke at her sons' school Riverview of overcoming his past which included a three-year jail term for a drug importation.

"I decided to heed [Coutts-Trotter's] exhortation not to continue to snub people who have gone to prison and paid their debt to society," she told the paper.

As for Cunneen, she has told friends she is keen to return to her role in the prosecutor's office after she has a couple of weeks well-earned rest.

Fletcher's fate is more uncertain, with a recommendation that he be criminally charged following a Police Integrity Commission investigation into his use of police officers' accounts to disguise his betting activities.