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Former Bananacoast Community Credit Union (BCU) CEO and director Lyndon Allen Kingston has been sentenced to jail after a jury in the Brisbane District Court found him guilty of four dishonesty offences, including unlawfully taking payments from contractors without telling his board.
Kingston was an executive - first as CFO and then CEO - at Coffs Harbour-based BCU for nine years, and was a senior manager at the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) before that.
Kingston has been sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment for the offences, but could be released after serving six months if he pays a $1,000 and shows good behaviour for the remaining 12 months of his sentence.
The order was handed down on Tuesday after the jury found him guilty on 12 November following a four-week trial.
Between December 2015 and August 2017, the jury deemed Kingston guilty on two counts for dishonestly used his position to gain advantage for himself by unlawfully receiving payments from two BCU contractors, which were made to him without the approval or knowledge of the BCU board.
The other two counts related to providing false and misleading information to the auditor of BCU to conceal the payments.
At the time the offences were committed, Mr Kingston was the CEO and a Director of BCU. Previously, Mr Kingston had held professional roles in audit, regulation and as a banking executive.
"As a director and CEO, Mr Kingston betrayed his position by dishonestly using his role to gain an advantage for himself, then attempting to conceal his wrongdoing. ASIC is committed to investigating dishonest conduct by directors and prosecuting such cases," says Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) chair Joe Longo.
The matter was prosecuted by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) following an investigation by ASIC.
Kingston was also charged with a further two counts, but the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on them so they were discontinued by the CDPP at the sentencing hearing.
In sentencing Mr Kingston, Judge Heaton KC said, ‘You were in a position of trust which you knew, and you exploited’ and ‘… [you] denied the board the opportunity to ensure good governance, transparency and integrity…’
The case initially came to light after Kingston took his former employer to court claiming $3.4 million in unpaid entitlements, but BCU came back with a counterclaim alleging he took "fraudulently concealed" secret commissions and gave a sham redundancy of $340,000 to his wife.
In 2019, BCU merged with Police and Nurses Limited, a community-owned bank based in WA. It is now a division of that bank.
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