A $5 million airport tender was offered for a 5 per cent kickback, and no Commonwealth offence fitted

The National Anti-Corruption Commission published the report of Operation Pelican on 8 April 2026, and with it a finding that the man who ran technology procurement for Australia's newest airport tried to sell a contract he did not have the power to award. The report is signed by the National Anti-Corruption Commissioner, Paul Brereton, and it ends with a recommendation that has nothing to do with airports: that the Attorney General's Department consider how to make the same conduct prosecutable under Commonwealth law at all.

Sajish Erasery joined WSA Co Limited, the Commonwealth company delivering Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport, in 2023 as Executive Procurement Manager for technology. In November 2023 WSA opened a tender, estimated at $5 million, for car park management systems. At a private dinner on 11 March 2024 Erasery told an employee of one bidder, given the pseudonym Mr Stirling in the report, that he could ensure the contract went that company's way in return for 5 per cent of its value, roughly $250,000. He followed the proposal up by telephone the next day, and that call was recorded.

The bidder's employee reported it. His employer told WSA on 14 March 2024, WSA referred the matter to the Commission and to the Australian Federal Police on 15 March, and a joint investigation began on 17 March. The Commissioner authorised a controlled operation under Part IAB of the Crimes Act 1914, telephone interception warrants followed on 19 March, and in the intercepted conversations Erasery agreed to take $200,000 in monthly instalments of $20,000, and offered to help inflate invoices so the bidder could recover the cost. On 27 March 2024 he took a lunchbox containing $20,000 in a Sydney park and was arrested by the AFP as he walked back to his car. The money was recovered. Twelve days had passed since the referral.

He pleaded guilty in the NSW Local Court in December 2024 to soliciting a corrupt commission contrary to section 249B of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), and on 25 July 2025 was convicted and sentenced to two years imprisonment, to be served in the community by way of an intensive correction order including 500 hours of community service. The Commission's report records that the sentencing judge found a breach of trust in a person trusted to safeguard public funds, and that although Erasery pointed to financial strain after losing about $220,000 on a property investment, his circumstances were not so dire that the offence was motivated by need rather than greed. The Commission found, on the civil standard, that the conduct was an abuse of office under subsection 8(1)(c) of the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2022 and was serious. It found no evidence that the behaviour was systemic within WSA.

The law reform point is the part that outlasts the case. WSA staff are Commonwealth public officials for the purposes of the NACC Act, which is why the Commission had jurisdiction. But the extended definition of Commonwealth public official in the Criminal Code, which reaches APS employees, people employed by the Commonwealth outside the Public Service Act, officers of Commonwealth authorities and contracted service providers, does not capture officers or employees of a Commonwealth company. Investigators considered subsection 184(2) of the Corporations Act, which carries five years for an officer who uses their position dishonestly for advantage, but subsection 1315(1) allows charges under that Act to be laid only by ASIC, an ASIC delegate, or a person authorised in writing by the responsible minister. Neither the Commission nor an AFP member qualified. So a Commonwealth official was prosecuted under New South Wales law. The report warns this is not likely to be an isolated issue given the number of Commonwealth companies running high value projects.

The report cites Department of Finance figures showing the Australian Government spent about $99.64 billion procuring goods and services in 2023 to 2024. Complex procurement is one of the Commission's strategic corruption priorities. In its April 2026 update the Commission said it had 29 preliminary investigations and 34 corruption investigations on foot as at 8 April, four matters before the courts, and 11 convictions since it began. The Erasery sentence, announced on 28 July 2025, was the first from an investigation the Commission itself started.

Whether a sentence served in the community is the going rate is contested by the record elsewhere. In San Diego on 16 January 2026, a federal judge sentenced Philip Flores, president of Intellipeak Solutions, to 48 months in custody and $80,500 in restitution for bribing a Naval Information Warfare Center employee, in a scheme that saw the government pay more than $16 million across about 26 contracts. Contractor Cambridge International Systems was fined $2.25 million in the same cluster of cases on 25 September 2024. Yet on 5 June 2026, according to a survey of enforcement by law firm Morrison Foerster, a former Honduran official who took bribes tied to police procurement contracts worth about $10 million received five years of probation with home confinement.

What is unresolved is the recommendation. The report does not record any response from the Attorney General's Department, and the Commission's own April update reported none. Nothing published so far shows whether the Commonwealth will legislate, how many officers of Commonwealth companies sit outside the Criminal Code bribery provisions, or what happens the next time a controlled operation runs out of time waiting for a minister's signature.