Brisbane High Court Approves Sale of Morehu-Barlow’s Assets
The assets of former public servant Hohepa Morehu-Barlow will now be up for sale with the Queensland State Government after a Brisbane Supreme Court judge has completed the process of approval.
Mr Barlow, 36, originally from New Zealand, has lost all his properties to the Public Trustee of Queensland after he was formally charged with fraud in January. He was accused of plundering $16 million from Queensland Health.
Mr Barlow was alleged to have plundered funds meant for charities including the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the Cancer Council Queensland and the Cerebral Palsy League over two or three years while working as the financial manager for Queensland Health.
A former flatmate of the beleaguered man had told in an interview with the New Zealand Herald that Mr Barlow made him believe he was of a Tahitian royalty descent.
"He would often go down to Louis Vuitton and spend up. Apparently he had a family trust that was from the royal connections ... Just before I moved out he'd just bought a Porsche... He also had a lot of dinner parties and he bought a lot of alcohol. He liked expensive furniture. He was generous to [friends] he saw as glamorous, or who he could name-drop in social circles."
Mr Barlow's colleagues had raised the alarm about his lifestyle and integrity, but an internal investigation could not validate their complaint. The auditor-general failed to detect Mr Barlow's 2-year fraud, which is reportedly the biggest in the public sector in Queensland.