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IBAC Investigation process

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Find out about the investigation process at IBAC. This podcast talks about powers IBAC has in the context of an investigation. Learn more about the covert and overt phases of an investigation. It also covers IBAC's Focused police complaints pilot and prosecution pathways. 

[Music] Hello and welcome to the latest IBAC podcast IBAC is Victoria's anti-corruption agency and our role is to expose and prevent public sector corruption and police misconduct. My name is Alex Doran and I'm the manager of the communications team at IBAC. Today I'll be chatting with IBAC Deputy Commissioner David wolf about the investigation process at IBAC. From the time we receive a complaint or notification to the release of a report or prosecution. Welcome David.  Thanks Alex it's great to be here with you. One of the key times the Victorian Community might hear about IBAC and often in the media is when we've concluded an investigation and a special report has been tabled. Before it gets to this point though a lot of work goes into the investigation itself. 

David, can you tell us a bit about how an investigation might come about? 

Sure the point you raised is really valid that by the time people hear about our investigations there is an enormous amount of work that has gone in to the lead up to that and it generally starts by us receiving a complaint via number of channels into the organization and that in itself engages many parts of the organization and quite a deal of work so when IBAC receives a complaint we have responsibility under our legislation to do one of three things with it. The first thing might be to dismiss it so if it hasn't got basis or substance then we can dismiss that complaint. We can refer it to another agency if there's someone more appropriate to investigate it or we might investigate it ourselves and there's a range of actions that we go through to get to that level and one of the things that we might do with a complaint is conduct what we call a preliminary inquiry and that's effectively to see whether the Matter's got basis so there's substance to it and start looking at what evidence we might collect in that process. 

When a preliminary inquiry is done and you feel that an investigation is warranted, can you tell us a bit about that process?

Indeed so following a preliminary inquiry which has effectively determined that there's substance to the allegations that have been raised and there might be some evidence that's been obtained in that process IBAC will make a decision that we'll investigate the matter some of the things we might look at are the seriousness the uh um the risk the consequence certainly whether it fits within our jurisdiction in the first place and what the potential outcomes you know might be and on that basis we will initiate a full investigation.

 As I understand it the parameters of the work that IBAC does particularly with an investigation can be found in the IBAC act and I wondered if you could just talk a little bit about how the IBAC ACT frames IBAC 's work?

 So the IBAC ACT certainly as you said sets out how we conduct our work and it can sound a bit complex and technical but if I can make it as simple as I possibly can it sets out who can be investigated what can be investigated how an investigation can commence how it can be conducted so it sets out our powers and the tools that we might use in the course of that investigation, what happens if we have evidence of corruption or police misconduct and then ultimately how we might report on that matter so it sets us out in quite detail and we're bound to follow that legislation.

Could you talk a little bit about the powers that IBAC has in the context of an investigation?

So as expected an anti-corruption agency should and does have quite significant powers to conduct the investigation those powers are provided to us by the parliament throughout legislation and as I said they can be perceived to be quite intrusive but as they should be because we are investigating really serious matters, so we have powers to require people to provide us documentation, we have powers to search a place and sees documentation or articles particularly if it's of an evidentiary nature. We have the powers to use surveillance devices and telephone intercepts and one of our most significant powers is the require for a person to present and give evidence and ask questions when required to do so and that's quite an extraordinary power in the context of investigative tools and one that's used very responsibly at a high level. 

Can you describe I guess the different phases of an investigation?

So, we've just spoken about how a complaint might generate an investigation. When we get into the investigation space there's effectively four main elements. The first part is scoping and planning so that's when the team set out what they might be looking at so the specific allegations and then plan about how they're going to look into the issue, what evidentiary avenues they might explore and how they might attend to that. Then the next phase is actually executing that plan so gathering the information uh seeking it from all particular sources and maybe using some of those powers I talked about earlier to gather that information the next part is once we bring all the information in is the analysis and review which again is a really time painstaking piece of the process and an element that we take you really responsibly in terms of what we're looking at, how we gather it and how we record it. And then comes the last part of the investigation which is the reporting, so preparing the material that sets out what we find and then telling the story of the investigation outcomes when an investigation is underway as I understand it there are generally two key phases the covert and overt phases are you able to explain a little bit about what those two phases mean.

 I just set out the four main elements of the investigation and one thing I neglected to say was depending on the nature of that matter those elements might occur sequentially or concurrently just depending on the nature of the issue we're investigating and the cycles in which they occur when we've completed those phases that's when we move into the reporting now as you mentioned two key ways we would describe our investigation. 

Firstly the covert phase so that's when we're conducting inquiries without public scrutiny without notification of people that we might be looking into or an understanding that we're actually looking into a matter and that's really important because it allows us to gather information that's not tainted or that hasn't been affected by uh any parties uh by the time that we obtain the information and allows us to get a real clear picture about what's occurring and we might also deploy some of those evidence gathering techniques around telephone interception or surveillance devices in that phase once we switch to starting to talk to people or doing actions that are in the public space like a search warrant or interviewing people. 

That's when we call it the overt phase and that's when clearly there might be a greater understanding about what or who we're investigating and that of course comes with a lot of challenges for us as well around how we manage the scrutiny of the investigation and potential people that might be involved.

David, could you talk a little bit about the time it takes to complete an investigation and why on occasion it may appear to be a long time and why others actually sometimes are also done quite quickly? 

That is one of the greatest challenges of operating in an anti-corruption space. Our investigations often take a long time it might come a surprise to many people that for us a year investigating seems to us like quite a short period of time sometimes our investigations reach out to 2 years in length that's just the investigation phase let alone the resolution phase which might be the ultimate report so unlike a TV show it's not done and dusted in 47 minutes plus ads it takes a lot of time and that's because we have to be precise we have to follow the rule of law. We have to ensure that natural Justice and fairness has been provided to all Witnesses and Persons of Interest and that means that our processes and investigations can take an awful long time yeah that term natural Justice that that gets used quite a bit at IBAC but of course it's part of what we do but I suspect a lot of the listening audience might not be familiar with it.

 Could you just talk a little bit about the natural Justice process and what it means in the context of our investigations?

 So natural justice is a really important element of what we do particularly for our reporting phase of our investigations. So it's where we will have completed an investigation, we'll have written a report that contains the facts as we see them and the elements of the investigation but before we move to any form of publication of that document we provide it to the parties that are involved or named in the document to allow them the opportunity to respond to their particular element and that's so that they can have an idea of how we've constructed the document and the uh the evidence we have and if they have any additional information or take issue with a particular element that's our opportunity to provide us that commentary and then it enables us to then assess their response and make sure that we use the information appropriately and depict it where need be in the final product if in effect it make sure that the final product is as accurate as possible and getting back to the original question around timeliness of Investigations IBAC has recently taken actions to improve the time it takes to undertake an investigation for certain complaints.

I was wondering whether you could elaborate on that please?

So we are always looking at ways to improve the timeliness I mean it's one of the biggest issues that comes up with anticorruption commissions and one of the biggest ones that causes concern and that is the time it takes for us to investigate finally report so we're always looking on our usual process to see where we can improve but specifically for police misconduct matters we recently piloted a dedicated process and team to address single incident reports that were made by the community or individuals and particularly a group which we called a high risk group that might experience greater levels of police misconduct which enabled us to assess those complaints investigate those complaints where necessary and provide outcomes in a far quicker time frame. 

So firstly if I can focus on the group of people that we saw as having a heightened risk of police misconduct that group included Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people the LGBTIGA plus Community culturally and linguistically diverse community members and people under age of 18 years and also all included those experiencing mental illness and people living with disability so quite a broad collection of people but people that have perhaps less of a voice when it comes to police misconduct so it was important for us to really look at those complaints and see if we could provide a far better service that's really interesting information.

 David about the focus police complaints pilot. What was the outcome of the pilot?

 Well, we had significant success. I've got to say this was one of the most important initiatives that I've seen at IBAC since I've been here in the six-month period the pilot team assessed 94 complaints so out of all of our complaints streams and information they found 94 matters that needed additional assessment to see whether they needed that immediate investigation and importantly out of that 24 police personal misconduct investigations were undertaken. That's a significantly higher rate than we ordinarily investigate and we're able to by virtue of having this dedicated team that were far more responsive in in response to these complaints the investigations were completed with a range of outcomes many resulted in the allegations ultimately not being substantiated. Quite a number found issues in the course of the police interaction with this group that required observations to Vic Pol and to the complainants and then some resulted in even more stride action around the discipline of police officers. Ultimately, we made a number of recommendations to Victoria Police but I think the key thing for this organization was that relationship with people who had reported the incidents we had a better relationship a more open relationship with them and the matter was looked at and dealt with in a far more expedient time frame.

Can you tell us what happens when an IBAC investigation finishes so in both our public sector corruption or police misconduct space?

When IBAC finishes an investigation we have that decision uh which is around what's going to be the disposition of the matter so in some circumstances. As I said if we don't substantiate the uh the allegations that are made then we'll advise the parties and effectively that's the end of it and the broader public are unaware of it and that's because of course out of fairness to um the people we've been investigating. It'd be unfair to taint them with any uh insinuation they've been investigated then of course there's findings where there might be some improvements required to processes or policies and we might make those private recommendations to organizations to improve what they're doing perhaps to prevent corruption uh vulnerabilities in the future. We also have I think we've spoken about those special reports the Publications where we will actually set out in writing what's occurred in the investigation and detail the facts generally um those are done through the process of our special reports which are tabled in Parliament and set out very clear details of what's occurred and of course we also have the option in some circumstances where we might prosecute an offense that includes both police misconduct offenses and in some um cases some of our serious corruption offenses.

You spoke about special reports. Does IBAC always publish special reports or reports after an investigation?

No, look we don't and it's in some respects it's just not possible to do so given the workload it takes and the justification to reach that threshold to report so uh what I think you can take from my commentary is though when we do produce a report it's generally a matter that has significant importance for the sector that reporting on or for the system or for the individual corrupt conduct that we might have identified so it's really important uh to note that that is one of the you know the most significant outcomes for the organization and one that we invest in heavily.

Would it be fair to say in the absence of a prosecution the Special Report can act as an exposure piece as well? And that it isn't something to be seen as lightly delivered by the organization?

 Look I think that's a really important point for a matter to give rise to a special report as I said it is quite significant and quite serious for a person to have their conduct exposed for that report is quite a significant outcome often we're asked after we've produced a report whether we're considering or going down a prosecution pathway one of the things that we do in considering whether to have a report or prosecute or both is what's the matter we're trying to expose what's the effect of that exposure how are we going to achieve that outcome what's the best avenue to do so. Sometimes it is through a detailed Special Report sometimes it is through a prosecution and sometimes it is through both but noting there's complexity if we're doing both and often quite a lag period between the report which is really important to tell the story first and then the prosecutorial action which can take some months down the track well.

 David, thanks very much it's been great to check with you today thank you for listening everyone you can find out more about the details of both private and public investigations in our annual reports and special reports and as part of our investigation summaries to learn more visit www.ibac.vic.gov.au
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