A prominent Northern Territory cricket identity has pleaded guilty to stealing $91,000 of Federal Government stimulus money.
The NT Magistrates Court in Darwin had been told in hearings that the crime began as an administrative error.
The Territory Department of Construction mistakenly transferred $91,000 into the business account of Trevor Woodhead.
The money was meant to go to Woodhead Proprietary Limited, an architecture firm that had been working on the the design and construction of school halls and libraries.
The project was part of Canberra's Building the Education Revolution program.
The department realised its error two months later when the firm questioned what had happened to its payment.
The department then asked Woodhead to give the money back.
Instead, he used $57,000 of the money to pay an outstanding tax bill and transferred the remainder into other accounts.
He then told the department he would pay the money back in stages.
Officials reported him to the police.
Woodhead pleaded guilty in the NT Supreme Court today to stealing.
He was remanded on bail and will be sentenced in January.
Before he resigned last year from the NT Cricket Association last year, Woodhead had been the only Indigenous person on the board of a state or territory cricket organisation in Australia.
He was involved in organising the Imparja Cricket Cup and went on a tour of England with Indigenous cricketers in 2009.
Tags: crime, courts-and-trials, cricket, programs-and-initiatives, darwin-0800 First posted December 20, 2011 13:09:00
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