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The 2021-22 CDPP Annual Report was tabled in Parliament on Friday 28 October 20

The CDPP recently received an overall satisfaction score of 86 per cent from its biennial 2022 Partner Agency Survey.

The CDPP's 2022-26 Corporate Plan is now available.

The Attorney-General of New South Wales today announced the appointment of Ms Sarah McNaughton SC as a judge of the Supreme Court of NSW. 

The CDPP’s Library and Research Services team has won the 2022 Legal Information Service of the Year award announced at the Australian Law Librarians’ Association (ALLA) conference in Hobart on Thursday 26 August.

On 7 July 2022 the Commonwealth Attorney-General, the Honourable Mark Dreyfus QC MP, announced he had declined to proceed further in the prosecution of Mr Bernard Collaery for five offences relating to the alleged unlawful communication of ASIS information contrary to the Intelligence Services

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The CDPP 2020-21 Annual Report was tabled in Parliament on Wednesday 20 October 2021. 

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Sarah McNaughton SC, has been extended in the role for a further two years.

The CDPP has launched a new Partner Agency Portal, giving investigators from partner agencies easy and timely access to information.
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The Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) is an independent prosecution service established by Parliament under the Director of Public Prosecutions Act 1983 (Cth) to prosecute alleged offences against Commonwealth law.

The Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions is warning members of the community to beware of scammers claiming to be from the CDPP.
The CDPP’s Partner Agencies will soon have access to a refreshed, scalable and dynamic, secure website to support their investigative work.

This is a joint media release between the Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions

A 24-year-old Sydney man has been jailed for nine years and four months after he posed as a teen to exploit and extort explicit images from children online.

Note: This is a joint media release between the Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions

A serial paedophile who abused children in Australia and Southeast Asia has today been sentenced to 35 years imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 28 years.

On 7 November 2019, Richard Ham (21) and Soo Lee (24) were sentenced in the District Court of New South Wales after pleading guilty to attempting to possess a commercial quantity of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), more commonly known as ‘ecstasy’.

Today, Perth woman Alesha Stopforth (30) was sentenced in the District Court of Western Australia to 3 years imprisonment, to be released after serving 16 months upon entering into a Recognisance Order in the amount of $10,000 and to be of good behaviour for a period of 20 months, after pleading

Suzanne Akkari (25) was today sentenced to 18 months imprisonment to be released forthwith on a recognisance of $500 and to be of good behaviour for 18 months, after pleading guilty to a charge of aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring another in the arrangement of a marriage to obtain perman

Today*, Savas Avan (49) was sentenced in the County Court of Victoria to 3 years imprisonment, after pleading guilty to mailing packages containing asbestos to consulates and embassies in Melbourne and Canberra.

Today, Luke Borg (36) was sentenced in the County Court of Victoria after pleading guilty to a number of child sex offences.

A man from Sydney was today sentenced to a total term of imprisonment of 34 years, with a non-parole period of 29 years, for preparing and planning a terrorist attack, threatening to kill the NSW Commissioner of Corrective Services and for an attack on an inmate in custody.

Three Victorian men were today sentenced in the Supreme Court of Victoria for the offence of engaging in a terrorist act.  A jury had earlier found the men guilty of this crime by setting fire to a Shia mosque in suburban Melbourne, causing $1.5 million in damage.

The Victorian County Court has today sentenced Mohamed Osman Omar (36), to four years imprisonment, after he pleaded guilty to defrauding the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) of more than $370,000, and attempting to obtain a further amount of more than $85,000.

Newstart fraud sentence upheld on appeal

Year
2020-2021
Location
Victoria

Name: Dowlat Soliman

Date of Judgment: 8 February 2021

Court: Court of Appeal – Victoria

Partner Agency: Services Australia

Summary of charges:

On 30 November 2020, Dowlat Soliman entered a plea of guilty to one charge of obtaining a financial advantage by deception contrary to section 134.2(1) of the Criminal Code (Cth). She was sentenced to 20 months’ imprisonment to be released after serving five months and entering into a Recognisance Release Order (RRO) in an amount of $1000. On 24 December 2020, Ms Soliman appealed against her sentence on the ground that the sentence was manifestly excessive. The matter was heard on 1 February 2021. The Court of Appeal refused the application for leave to appeal on 8 February 2021.

Synopsis:  

Between 13 March 2013 and 27 November 2017, the offender dishonestly obtained a financial advantage in the amount of $65,298.58 from Services Australia in the form of payments of Newstart Allowance, to which she was not entitled. During the period of the offending, the offender reported her income on 124 occasions, actively making 51 false nil income declarations and 72 false under-declarations. Over a period of around four and a half years she earned gross income of $236,563.05 but declared only $22,126.76 to Services Australia, being less than 10 per cent of her earnings. The offending was not voluntarily disclosed but detected following an anonymous tip off.

On 19 August 2016, she was contacted by Services Australia regarding irregularities in her declarations. Ms Soliman advised Services Australia that her job provider had brought to her attention that she had not been declaring all of her earnings to Services Australia and provided her with an overview on how to correctly report her earnings. She further advised that she now understood how to correctly declare her earnings. Services Australia encouraged her to contact them should she require assistance in the future. Subsequently, Ms Soliman continued to offend.

The County Court plea hearing was conducted online via the Webex platform. The Informant was able to join the Webex meeting and assist with queries from Counsel in real time. This had a valuable impact on the smooth running of proceedings.

Key points:

On application for leave to appeal, the sentencing judge’s conclusion that a term of imprisonment was warranted and that a period of custody was required, was not challenged by counsel for the applicant. The submission for the applicant concentrated almost entirely on the period of actual custody; specifically, it was submitted that no more than three months’ imprisonment should be required before the applicant was to be eligible for release on recognisance. The Court of Appeal found the submission incurably flawed, stating that the decision as to how much time should be served is quintessentially discretionary for the sentencing judge.

Counsel for the applicant drew the Court’s attention to the decision of the Queensland Court of Appeal in R v Newton (2010) 199 A Crim R 288, specifically to the judgment of Chesterman JA in dissent. At paragraph three of the judgment His Honour stated “An application for leave to appeal against sentence cannot succeed unless the applicant demonstrates that the sentence actually imposed was not appropriate at all: that it was manifestly excessive because it was beyond the permissible range of discretionary judgment.”

His Honour’s description above of the ground of manifest excess was noted as entirely consistent with well-established principles. The Court of Appeal found that in the present case it was simply not tenable to argue that the requirement of the applicant to serve five months of a 20 month sentence is beyond the permissible range of discretionary judgment’.

The Court of Appeal agreed with the CDPP that, had considerable weight not been given to the factors raised in mitigation of sentence, a longer period of time to serve would have been required, given the objective seriousness of the offending.

Decision:

Following an application to expedite the hearing, the matter was listed on 1 February 2021. Judgment was handed down on 8 February 2021 by Maxwell P and Beach JA, dismissing the application for leave to appeal. Given the seriousness of the offending and the applicant’s persistence in her deceptions after being questioned about the income declarations, the immediate custodial sentence of five months was well within the range of sentences reasonably open to the judge.