Cover-up claim over lewd text scandal engulfs club directors

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A single lewd text message about oral sex is set to embroil one of the country’s largest registered clubs in claims of a cover-up. The Herald can reveal sworn statements vindicating a club director accused of sending the text were all drafted by the same person – the architect of the Bulldogs salary cap rort, Gary McIntyre.

It was just after 8am on Thursday, January 11, 2018, when a female member of Canterbury League Club received a text from George Coorey, a director of the club and a long-standing friend of McIntyre, also a current director.

Canterbury League Club director Gary McIntyre, pictured in the aftermath of the Bulldogs salary cap scandal.Credit: SMH

“Your [sic] most welcome,” texted Coorey replying to her message from the previous evening thanking him for organising a club jersey, “but you all have to suck off Mullet [another club member].”

In late 2020, Liquor and Gaming NSW, the registered clubs regulator, launched an inquiry into whether Coorey was a fit and proper person following revelations in this masthead about the text message as well as complaints from a number of women about multiple instances of vulgar and inappropriate behaviour by Coorey, who was by then club chairman.

Coorey, 63, a mortgage broker, was removed as chairman after the revelations. Investigators from L&G were provided the minutes from that board meeting, which recorded Coorey saying the text message was just a joke.

When an associate of Coorey’s, Campsie builder Arthur Stanton, provided a statutory declaration claiming he had sent the offensive text message, Coorey was cleared. Sources within the regulator have raised serious questions about the failure to interview Stanton and other glaring omissions in the Coorey investigation.

George Coorey was deposed as chairman of the Canterbury League Club but remains a director.Credit: Dean Sewell

Having been exonerated, Coorey is threatening to sue the club over the $70,000 legal fees he claims he incurred fighting the allegations.

However, it has emerged that Coorey approached at least one person to falsely claim responsibility for the text before Stanton volunteered. “I was that stunned,” said the friend who declined Coorey’s request.

Another club member has admitted to signing a statutory declaration pre-written for him by McIntyre at the behest of Coorey. “He rang me up and begged me and begged me and in the end I did it,” said the member, who acknowledged that what he signed was false.

The crude text message sent by George Coorey in 2018.

When told signing a statutory declaration knowing the contents were untrue was a criminal offence, he contacted L&G asking for his statement to be withdrawn. “It went to Gaming and then 24 hours later my conscience got the better of me,” the man said.

Three women gave evidence to the regulator about Coorey’s inappropriate behaviour including that on multiple occasions he would “grab his crotch and fondle it whilst sticking his tongue out and running [it] around his lips”.

After L&G’s investigation, in March 2021 Coorey was asked to “show cause” as to why disciplinary action should not be taken against him.

The statutory decision-maker ILGA (Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority) provided Coorey with an opportunity to respond.

Swinging into action on his friend’s behalf was disgraced former Bulldogs boss McIntyre who, after a 20-year absence, was re-elected to the league club board in 2022.

Builder Arthur Stanton signed an affidavit claiming he was responsible for sending the offensive text message using George Coorey’s phone. Credit: Kate Geraghty

McIntyre served a two-year ban from holding a position in the NRL after he was found to be the architect of the Bulldogs’ $1 million salary cap rorts, which resulted in a $500,000 fine and the docking of 37 competition points in 2002. “Clearly there has been conduct designed to gain an unfair advantage over the other teams in the competition,” said then-NRL boss David Gallop of McIntyre’s scheme to cheat the system.

Coorey, who provided a character reference for the jailed former Labor minister Eddie Obeid, in which he expressed “astonishment” that Obeid had been found guilty “knowing his personal qualities and character”, was on the football club board with McIntyre during the salary cap rort.

McIntyre explained that Coorey was not initially worried about the publicity about the text message “because he didn’t think anything would happen but later on, when licensing decided to do something about it … I said, ‘mate, it would be good to say who sent it’.”

“He came to me some months later and told me one of his mates confessed to him that he’d done it,” McIntyre said.

McIntyre, a retired solicitor, confessed he drafted most of the 18 sworn statements on behalf of witnesses, including his wife. The template for one such statement has been obtained by the Herald. “I have known George Coorey for more than [insert number] years,” the template says. “I have never seen George Coorey make a comment or gesture of a sexual nature to any female in the club nor has anyone ever indicated to me that he has done so.”

The template also suggested the women had only complained as revenge for Coorey calling them out for having affairs with men in his inner circle. This claim is vehemently denied by the women.

Those contacted by the Herald stood by their sworn statements and claimed they had written them of their own volition. The penalty for signing a statutory declaration knowing its contents to be untrue is up to five years in prison.

Michael Barakat, an employee of the Commonwealth Bank, said he had no comment to make and the case was closed. Anthony Moujalli, Coorey’s brother-in-law, said he could not speak as he was “about to have a procedure”.

Luke Brailey, whom the women claimed had previously apologised to them about Coorey’s behaviour, said they were “the biggest liars ever to draw breath”. Brailey said he wrote his own statement.

Keith Lotty, a life member, said he could not remember his statement, but he had never known Coorey to behave disrespectfully towards women. Greg Swiderski, the club’s head of security, said he had written his statement freeform and by himself. “A lot of [the statements] are quite generic but … I haven’t put anything in there that I would retract,” he said.

In a statutory declaration drafted for him by McIntyre, Stanton, 62, confessed that he had sent the vulgar text message without Coorey’s knowledge.

Asked if he sent the message, Stanton said, “I am not making any comment,” and hung up.

“The girls had no one to support them but themselves,” McIntyre said while boasting of the number of statements submitted on Coorey’s behalf.

Other people not interviewed by L&G have said the women’s claims were true. “He said in my presence, ‘Take your undies off and sit on my lap’,” said one female club member, “It was revolting.”

One of the men who frequently sat with Coorey and his friends at the club said, “On numerous occasions, I heard him degrading women.” He also witnessed Coorey asking women to sit on his lap or the laps of his friends.

McIntyre said he was regularly at the bar with Coorey and the alleged gross behaviour “never happened”.

Numerous people said McIntyre was not often in the bar on a Sunday night and when he was, he was with his own friends while, as one observer said, “George would be near the TAB section hanging around with his own time-wasters and fools”.

In dismissing the allegations, ILGA said it placed weight “on a statutory declaration provided by Mr Stanton which confirms he was the author and sender” of the offensive text message.

Last year, the women wrote to the then-racing minister Kevin Anderson complaining that they were “confused and shocked” that ILGA had accepted without question the statutory declaration from Stanton. “ILGA failed to ask us if we knew Arthur Stanton and why would Arthur Stanton, someone we have never met or could identify in a crowd send a sexual text from another person’s phone at 8am?”

ILGA replied on the minister’s behalf that the matter had been investigated and closed.

A spokesperson for ILGA said there was “insufficient evidence” to declare Coorey “not fit and proper” under the Registered Clubs Act.

These revelations will place pressure on L&G, which scaled back its investigative unit in April last year. In March, the office received several complaints about the board elections at Canterbury League Club, in which Coorey was standing for re-election. They included that Coorey used his food and beverage allowance to buy votes from members.

The club was threatened with legal action over their failure to hand over CCTV footage.

Asked, among other things, whether there was a possible conflict of interest in that those responsible for handing over the footage had previously provided statements for Coorey, league club CEO Greg Pickering said, “I am unable to respond due to legal reasons.”

The fresh investigation into allegations of electoral impropriety uncovered flaws in the earlier investigation into Coorey. These included ILGA’s acceptance of so many remarkably similar statements; the fact that Stanton, the purported author of the text message, was never interviewed; and the failure to ask the women whether they knew Stanton.

The investigators revisited the matter, including conducting forensic checks to see if Stanton and Coorey were together when the text message was sent, but they were transferred to another unit in an agency shake-up before any findings were made.

The women, who feel let down by the system, say they want Coorey held accountable for the reputational damage he has caused them and their families.

“I can’t go to the leagues club any more because of the lies George Coorey has spread,” said the woman who received the offensive text message.

“I am not letting this go,” said another.

Coorey did not respond to calls.

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