VICTORIAN horse racing’s new corruption watchdog has vehemently denied having accepted cash from a convicted drug dealer to do private detective work, saying the allegations are part of a malicious campaign to destroy his reputation and force him out of the industry.
Former detective Dayle Brown, chosen last week to head Racing Victoria’s integrity services unit, said through his lawyers that he had nothing to hide.
But the Opposition’s racing spokesman, Denis Napthine, who raised the allegations in Parliament on Wednesday, last night renewed his call for a judicial inquiry into Mr Brown’s past, “to clarify the situation once and for all”.
Dr Napthine said there had been allegations that Mr Brown and a former colleague, while serving police officers, had accepted $30,000 from “convicted drug dealer Paul Pavlovski to undertake private investigations”.
Mr Brown has previously admitted that he helped Pavlovski track down his wife and children in South Australia in 1994.