A former senior NSW Health employee will be referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions after he was found to have engaged in serious corruption, including faking his CVs and nepotism.
In a report published on Friday, the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) found Zoran Ribicic engaged in serious corrupt conduct over many years.
Mr Ribicic was the NSW Health director of engineering and asset management between 2021 and 2024.
ICAC claimed Mr Ribicic improperly awarded hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars to external contractors, including his sister Mirela Derrin's company Risk Control Consulting (RCC), which received more than $275,000 in payments from Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District (ISLHD) across a two-year period.
ICAC found he also favoured RCC over competitors and never declared the conflict of interest to ISLHD.
An ISLHD officer reported Mr Ribicic to ICAC in July 2024, and he was subsequently suspended with pay before he resigned in September that year.
Corruption exposed
Mr Ribicic was also found to have engaged in "order splitting", according to the ICAC report.
He was authorised to approve quotes up to $30,000, and requested favoured suppliers to break much larger bodies of work into bundles below that amount.
This allowed him to engage his family and associates without the competition and oversight that would ordinarily apply to substantial contracts.
Mr Ribicic told ICAC there were six critical maintenance issues that required attention after the COVID-19 pandemic.
These ranged from malfunctioning lifts and automatic doors to "having to shut down operating theatres because of condensation because cooling and, and, and ventilation wasn't good enough".
NSW ICAC Commissioner Helen Murrell said Mr Ribicic's lack of qualifications to resolve these maintenance issues could have threatened the safety of patients.
"He was not qualified to deal with these problems," she said.
Mr Ribicic also deliberately failed to declare secondary employment with engineering and consulting firm Lanmar between 2023 and 2024, as required by ISLHD's code of conduct.
He received $210,375 for 10 months' work with the private company that he previously brought on as a consultant to ISLHD.
Alleged fraud
ICAC's report states Mr Ribicic will be referred to the DPP to consider potential fraud offences after he made six job applications to government departments.
These applications contained fake qualifications and used false references to land public sector roles between 2012 and 2025.
He falsely stated he had a doctorate in business administration, a master's degree in project management, a bachelor's degree in engineering and a TAFE Engineering diploma.
ISLHD and five other employers all failed to detect his dishonesty and hired him over a decade.
Public agencies to receive training
ICAC Commissioner Helen Murrell said the explosive findings carry several lessons for organisations to reduce risk of corruption in the workplace.
The recommendations in the report include stronger qualification verification processes, improved conflict of interest controls, enhanced procurement oversight, and improve governance arrangements for consultants.
She said ICAC would deliver training to public agencies like NSW Health in the coming months.
"We'll be leveraging off this report to deliver education to numerous agencies across New South Wales," she said
Commissioner Murrell would not comment on whether there were any pending ICAC investigations into Mr Ribicic's dealings at the other companies where he was previously employed, but said some of his actions may result in criminal charges.
She lauded processes within the ISLHD that led to the corruption being reported to ICAC.
"It's really great when agencies suspect corrupt conduct and they report it to us," the commissioner said.
"What we worry about is when the internal processes of an agency are such that suspected corrupt conduct is not reported to us, but it's a statutory requirement for it to be reported to us, and that is what happened here."
ISLHD has been contacted for comment.
