A sacked transport official at the centre of a kickback scandal boasted in WhatsApp messages about the first bribe he was to be handed by one of the road contractors he had improper dealings with, telling his alleged accomplice at the department that it would be “cash in a brown paper bag”.

In his 12th day in the Independent Commission Against Corruption witness box, Ibrahim Helmy was grilled about receiving more than $600,000 in cash bribes from family business Capital Lines & Signs , which gained about $36 million worth of work from Transport for NSW between 2020 and this year.

Under intense questioning, Helmy confirmed to the inquiry that he traded large amounts of the cash he had pocketed from the Queanbeyan company for meme coins, bypassing cryptocurrency exchanges by arranging

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