A trial has started for two men accused of corrupting a federal government recruitment process to take advantage of a "hothouse" of contract work for their own financial gain.
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Abdul "Alex" Aziz El-Debel and Raminder Singh Kahlon are on trial in the ACT Supreme Court where they are charged with conspiring to dishonestly obtain a gain from the Commonwealth between March 2019 and June 2020.
Commonwealth prosecutor David Staehli SC in his opening statement on Tuesday said the two men and a third accused, Gopalakrishnan Suryanarayanan Vilayur, allegedly corrupted the Department of Finance's process to recruit IT contractors from companies owned by two of the men. Vilayur is not part of this trial.
Mr Staehli said the corruption included writing position descriptions and being part of an evaluation panel.
He said the department ultimately recruiting personnel from those companies - being New Horizons Businesses Solutions owned by Kahlon and Algoram owned by Vilayur - meant "large sums" of money flowing to their companies.
"It was the environment of the department ... there appears to be somewhat of a hothouse in relation to the amount of work that was on hand," Mr Staehli said.
The court heard Kahlon sent some amounts - up to $250,000 - to companies in Hong Kong and India.
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Mr Staehli said such transfers were not a criminal offence but that it showed they had a "pool of money" from which to draw on and share in as part of their alleged conspiracy.
He said most of the trial would involve the playing of phone interceptions, which are estimated to be 24 hours long.
He cited some of the phone transcripts, including one about "the amount of the margins" to be gained from the proceeds.
Transcripts also showed El-Debel telling the department he was driving to southwest Sydney to visit his sick mother before going to a northern suburb to allegedly pick up $34,000.
However, Mr Staehli said there was "no proof of there being actual money" in relation to that Sydney trip.
He said the prosecution case was circumstantial.
"The absence of that may be perhaps regarded as a definitive answer to the proposition that this is a case based on a series of unfortunate events," he said.
Other evidence includes financial material, text messages, records by the finance department and up to 15 witnesses.
The case continues on Wednesday when defence lawyers are set to make opening addresses.
About four weeks have been allocated for the jury trial presided by Justice Michael Elkaim.
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