Share this with family and friends. Thomson pays big price for escort charges Charging prostitutes to his union credit card has cost Craig Thomson his career and seen him sentenced to time in jail, but he continues to fight. Paying for escorts is legal in Australia - unless you use a union credit card to do it. The former Health Services Union national secretary was handed a month jail sentence, with nine months wholly suspended, on Tuesday for what a magistrate described as brazen offending and a huge breach of trust.
After spending about an hour in custody, Thomson emerged on bail to insist he's innocent and that he looks forward to an appeal in November against his conviction and sentence. Thomson was convicted of 65 fraud charges, three committed while he was a member of federal parliament. It was when Thomson became an MP in that the union started to ask questions.
When the union investigated the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of transactions on Thomson's Diners Club and MasterCard accounts, some suspicious items emerged. Innocent-sounding company names like Aboutoun Catering and International Immobialiare turned out to be the trading names for brothels and escort agencies. So-called dinner meetings seemed to have been paid for twice, and thousands of dollars of cash had been withdrawn from the credit cards.
When Fair Work Australia investigated him, Thomson denied doing anything wrong. When the evidence looked overwhelming, Thomson told interviewer Laurie Oakes that other rival HSU officials had framed him. He maintained that line of defence, and behind the shield of parliamentary privilege accused Marco Bolano of specifically threatening to set him up with "hookers".
After a long investigation and legal process the matter finally came to court for trial last December. It heard how Thomson personally instructed HSU employee Criselee Stevens that she was only to use the credit card for work purposes and cash withdrawals were not permitted.
