Cop thought Guy’s claims were ‘gospel truth’

A senior police officer has hit back at a barrister’s suggestion he turned a blind eye to information supportive of Guy Sebastian’s former manager, who is on trial accused of fraudulently embezzling about $900,000 from the pop star.

Detective David Murphy, the officer in charge of the investigation into Titus Day, said “seeing what I’ve seen now, I wouldn’t have charged him” as he was presented with multiple bank records while giving evidence in the NSW District Court on Tuesday.

The bank records appeared to explain why Mr Sebastian had not been paid portions of the money allegedly owned to him, including about $177,000 which the court heard had been paid to Empire Touring for costs incurred for the Madness album tour.

Mr Day’s barrister, Dominic Toomey SC, told the court Det Murphy sent an email to Empire boss Marc Christowski, asking about the $177,000 which Mr Day’s company, 6 Degrees, paid Empire and referring to Mr Sebastian as a “victim”.

Mr Toomey accused Det Murphy of failing to disclose Mr Christowski’s email response to the NSW Office of the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), who were managing the case against Mr Day in court.

Det Murphy said “I can’t see that it was forwarded on” when asked what he did with the email response.

“I can’t remember it,” he said when asked why he did not disclose the email response.

When Mr Toomey said “it’s not the sort of email you wouldn’t read” and “it’s not just that you didn’t like what you saw in the response”, Det Murphy replied “no”.

The court was told Det Murphy could also not recall whether or not he investigated a claim Mr Day used $147,988 in proceeds from a Taylor Swift support act gig to buy $234,000 worth of shares on Mr Sebastian’s behalf in a company called My Medical Records (MMR).

“I don’t think there would have been anything preventing me at the time,” Det Murphy said when asked what stopped him pursuing the MMR line of inquiry.

“I don’t know why I didn’t.”

Det Murphy said another issue he was “unsure about” was whether or not he discussed an alleged $22,000 overpayment with Mr Sebastian.

“I disagree,” Det Murphy said when Mr Toomey suggested he had been “wilfully blind to matters which might have been exculpatory of Mr Day”.

Mr Toomey said “whatever he [Mr Sebastian] told you, you accepted to be gospel truth”, to which Det Murphy replied “yes”.

The trial resumes on Thursday.