The Health Services Union is in crisis again with the management of Victoria No 1 Branch who are currently under investigation for fraud expelling a number of its competitors, communist style, the day before nominations close for the new election. This is done at a time when there is a Royal Commission into the unions so it shows just how much they think they are above accountability and the law.

It is well-known that Bill Shorten will almost certainly have to front the Trade Union Royal Commission given his knowledge of the AWU fraud in the 1990’s which involved Julia Gillard. What is lesser known but also highly likely is that Mr Shorten will have plenty of questions to answer at the Royal Commission in relation to the current fraud and theft at Health Services Union given the management are all Bill Shorten supporters and vice versa.

The current secretary of the HSU Victoria No 1 Branch (which trades as the Health Workers Union to conceal its corrupt past) is Diana Asmar who along with others is under investigation by the Fair Work Commission for fraud and theft which I reported last year. (Click here to read)

From what others have told me Mrs Asmar is nothing more than a front for her husband David Asmar who really runs the show and who is a former staff member of Senator Stephen Conroy. The other crony in the background with his hand on the till is Andrew Landeryou who has a long history of fraud and theft and specialises in looting unions for every cent he can get from them. During the previous election in 2012 Mr Landeryou used his website Vexnews to attack competitors of Diane Asmar.

When Diana Asmar won the election Mr Landeryou’s wife Kimberley Kitching was made General Manager of the union even though she had no experience whatsoever working in unions. Ms Kitching, with the support of Bill Shorten, then went on to use union funds to run for Labor Party pre-selection in several seats but lost each time. It is suspected that the union donated heavily to Bill Shorten’s campaign to become leader of the Labor Party.

Kitching clearly supported Bill, as the 2 Tweets below show, so why wouldn’t she donate the unions money to Bill’s cause given she steals from it for everything else.

Maybe the Royal Commission should look at how Bill Shorten funded his election campaign to become leader of the Labor Party and how much did the long-suffering members of the HSU get ripped off.

The Daina Asmar – Kimberley Kitching attempted cover-up

Peter Wicks who has previously been described on the site as Craig Thomson’s puppet wrote a post last year pointing about Diane Asmar’s corrupt management at the HSU. It was a surprise to me that Wicks would write that as he is a Labor Party boy, but good to see. The post  did not last long and was very quickly taken down by Mr Wicks who publishes a blog and writes for the Labor supporting website Independent Australia.

Part of what Mr Wicks wrote was:

“Last year the union members of the various branches voted in the HSU elections. After an initial delay due to a court decision regarding one of the candidates Diana Asmar and her eligibility to stand members of Number 1 Branch finally had a chance to clean up their branch of the union.”

“Or so they thought…”

“They were wrong.”

“However other allegations include the union being run by Kimberly Kitching who was appointed as the unions General Manager upon Diana Asmar being elected as Secretary but not elected by members. The use of union staff and funds to run pre-selection campaigns for ALP candidacy for Federal seats for Kitching, and massive legal bills being paid with questions of them being for legal fees due to Diana Asmar’s woes with the ombudsman in regards to events at Darebin council of which she is a former Mayor.”

“Still more allegations involve the completing of Right Of Entry tests by others for union organisers, which is illegal and equivalent to filling out a statutory declaration for somebody else, the disappearance of telephone equipment from the office, and also the approval of travel expenses.”

“If these allegations have merit, and they certainly appear detailed and are backed up by many others I have spoken to, then the current running of the Number 1 Branch leaves a lot to be desired.”

“For a team that ran their election campaign under the banner of transparency, team Asmar certainly needs to be transparent with the members now and provide some answers to the many allegations.” (Click here to read the whole post that was deleted).

I have been told the post was taken down after Peter Wicks received a threatening phone call from Ms Kitching’s husband Andrew Landeryou. This sounds about right to me as I also received a call last year from Mr Landeryou after I wrote a post about the dodgy way his wife was running for Labor Party pre-selection although he was smart enough not to threaten me as it would have achieved nothing except to give me more content for this site. 

Mr Landeryou was not so smart back in 2005 when he was “reported to the Director of Public Prosecutions for allegedly threatening the liquidator of the Melbourne University Student Union”. At the time Mr Landeryou had been caught looting the student union. Looks like old habits die hard with Bill Shorten’s mate Mr Landeryou and he is putting his hard-earned (or stolen) experience to work and looting the HSU.

Mr landeryou is good friends with Bill Shorten and is known to meet up with the aspiring PM at least once a week for coffee. So did Bill Shorten have any input regarding the threat to Peter Wicks to take down the post and the decision to expel members of the HSU?

It could be argued and argued correctly that Andrew Landeryou’s threat to Mr Wicks was designed to conceal the fraud and theft that is going on at the union. That being the case then Mr Landeryou committed a criminal offence when he made the call as he was trying to conceal a crime which is a crime in itself.

Current crisis

The elections for the HSU management roles are only a couple of months away and Diana Asmar and her fellow cronies David Asmar, Kimberly Kitching and Andrew Landeryou are obviously extremely worried. If someone else wins the election they will get access to the financial records. The records will show massive fraud and theft by them and with the Royal Commission hot on their heels they will be looking down the barrel of some serious jail time.

The Age reported yesterday:

“Victorian health workers union chief Diana Asmar has expelled a string of union members who are either preparing to run against her team at his year’s union election, or who are backing opposition tickets.”

Admin: I spoke to the Victorian police on Tuesday and they are still in the progress of investigating the Bill Shorten rape allegations. I have set up a new page for the investigation which I will update when there is new information. (Click here to go to the page)

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