An African NDIS official has been charged after allegedly using his position as a senior public servant to refer participants to a disability support business his co-owned in the Northern Territory.
National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) employee Kingsley Ebelebe, 47, appeared in Darwin Local Court on Thursday after officers from the Fraud Fusion Taskforce (FFT) arrested him on Wednesday and raided his home in Lee Point, and businesses in Durack and Yarrawonga.
Police alleged Ebelebe, who previously worked for NT Health and held senior roles in Nigerian community groups, allegedly claimed more than $28 million in NDIS funding over six years, of which police allege $5 million was identified as suspicious during an investigation that started in October last year.
He was charged with one count of obtaining financial advantage by deception, two counts of general dishonesty causing a loss, one count of abuse of public office, and one count of unauthorised use or disclosure of protected Agency information.
Bail was not opposed and Ebelebe was released on conditions he report to police regularly and not leave the territory, and he provided a $10,000 cash surety, with another $10,000 to be forfeited by his wife in the event of a significant bail breach, NT News reported.
Judge Steve Ledek also gave Ebelebe a non-contact order preventing him from communicating with anyone connected to NDIS staff, with an exemption for if he needed to contact the agency in regards to one of his three children.
The Commonwealth prosecutor asked for a 10-week adjournment to deal with the large volume of evidence, and said the case would likely end up being heard in the Supreme Court.
The NDIA said it has disrupted more than 2,500 NDIS providers with “a pattern of incorrect or non-compliant claims or other significant risk indicators” since the FFT was created in November 2022.
“Our investigations led to this arrest. Attempts to defraud the NDIS and participants will be detected and the full weight of the law applied,” the spokesperson said,” a spokesperson from the FFT’s Integrity Capability Division said.
FFT officials said last year the scale of fraud plaguing the $52 billion NDIS was too vast to calculate, and was far larger than the previous estimate of $8 billion.
Header image: Left, right, Kingsley Ebelebe being arrested (FFT).
