Concert promoter Andrew McManus was the subject of two police raids late last week, Fairfax Media is reporting. Two properties linked to the troubled promoter, including his Mornington Peninsula home, were raided by detectives from NSW and Victoria Police on Thursday.
According to Fairfax, a Victoria Police spokeswoman confirmed that a joint taskforce had executed warrants at McManus’ business premises in Richmond and his Mornington Peninsula residence as part of an ongoing NSW Police investigation into the promoter.
The raids come after McManus claimed during a police interview that he was the owner of a mysterious suitcase containing $702,000 cash, which was found in a Sydney hotel room in 2011. Meanwhile, documents tendered during a recent court battle revealed other dodgy dealings.
According to the documents tendered in NSW Supreme Court during a battle for control over the $702,000, McManus received $450,000 from notorious Perth bikie gang the Coffin Cheaters and was involved in the much-publicised Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal.
The mysterious suitcase of cash has kept McManus in the headlines for several months now, beginning with a July article by Fairfax reporter Kate McClymont, which detailed a series of admissions McManus made during a 2012 interview with NSW Police.
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During the interview, McManus claimed that the Sydney hotel suitcase, which was stuffed with $10,000 bundles of cash totalling $702,000, was his. “I gave someone 700 large, and you’ve found someone with 700 large. It’s my 700 large,” he stated in documents tendered in court.
McManus claimed the money was proceeds from a Lenny Kravitz tour and that he had used about 20 crew members to “sneak” the cash in from New Zealand. “I’m not a dickhead but… if this went to the ATO, I’d be cooked again,” Mr McManus reportedly told police.
However, McManus’ startling admissions did not end there, with the promoter telling police that if they came to his house “right now”, they would find a safe with “600 large sittin’ in it”. It appears that NSW and Victoria police finally took McManus up on his offer on Thursday.
While McManus has not denied making the claims, he has since told News Limited that the admissions came during a tumultuous period in his life. “I was on a lot of morphine, I was drinking, and I was not in a good place,” McManus said.
However, Fairfax claim the promoter was accompanied by his lawyer and former partner in a Sydney nightclub, Michael Croke, during the interview. Following the publication of McClymont’s article, McManus released a statement in which he slammed the report, calling it “gutter journalism by a bottom feeder”.
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In the mean time, the truth about the suitcase full of cash and the extent of McManus’ involvement remains unclear. Last month, Justice Richard Button denied an application for the money by former cage fighter and racehorse trainer Sean Carolan, a McManus associate who was found with the cash at Sydney’s Hilton Hotel in August 2011.
Carolan had been given the money by a man named Owen Hanson Jnr, described by McClymont as a US-based money-lender, who had received the cash from convicted drug trafficker Craig Haeusler.
Haeusler, a longtime friend of McManus, was with the promoter at the InterContinental hotel near Sydney’s Circular Quay, where the two transferred $10,000 bundles from plastic shopping bags into a black suitcase.
According to Fairfax, Haeusler later told police that McManus was repaying Hanson, as the American had fronted the deposit for a ZZ Top tour promoted by McManus.
Speaking to Tone Deaf in July, McManus said that the entire saga amounts to character assassination. “The Police ran this case, what? Last three years? So they’ve cost the taxpayers of New South Wales nearly a million dollars.”
“They turn around and go, ‘We need a scalp – take whoever you can’. And when this journalist has gone in and dug in to find out who the players were, I’m the easiest mark. And so they try to character assassinate me again.”
