Gary Celebioglu, manager at Cheson Printing, one of the companies named in the Victorian Parliament in connection with an alleged invoice rort, has told ProPrint the allegations are completely untrue.
Celebioglu says, “We are quite dumbfounded, surprised and furious at the unsubstantiated allegations made towards our company and the way it was reported in the media.
"We refute any such suggestion or allegation.”
According to a report in the Herald Sun a handful of ALP MPs and printing firms have been working together ordering print material but stating more on their invoices.
Celebioglu says , "The whole episode started with opposition leader Matthew Guy of the Liberal Party hiding behind his parliamentary privilege to link our company to the so called ‘ALP printing rort’ scandal last week in the parliament despite having absolutely no evidence, to score himself some cheap political points at the expense of our good reputation and possibly livelihood.
"We have written to Mr Guy asking to refrain himself from making unsubstantiated allegations towards us and for an apology – not surprisingly we are yet to hear back from him. Making such unsubstantiated claims using parliamentary privileges should be an offence.”
[Related: Victorian ALP in printing rort claim]
Celebioglu says, "We have been in business for over 37 years and our reputation is something we take seriously. Mr Guy has tainted our hard earned good reputation and there should be consequences for him.
"He is supposedly getting his information from certain faceless ALP whistle blowers who seems to have their own hidden agenda. Mr Guy should have checked his facts and the credibility of his sources before making these allegations public – whether it is in the parliament or not is irrelevant as the media can report it regardless.
"We have already written to Bruce Atkinson, the person investigating the alleged rorts and offered him our full cooperation in his investigation. We have not been officially told we are being investigated. So we only know this from media reports.
"I would also like to strongly emphasise that Khalil Eideh (the MP allegedly linked to this scandal) is not one of our clients and has never been. We have not associated with him or printed any jobs for him directly or indirectly.
"For close to 10 years we have not printed anything of significance for any members of the Parliament federal or state or from any side of politics.
"We cannot vouch for the other printing business mentioned, but the lack of Tax Invoices for printing to parliamentarians from our company will prove we are hardly even in a position to ‘rort’ the system. It is important to us that, as an innocent party, we do not get dragged in this smear campaign and politics blame game due to no fault of our own."
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