Reality-TV star Matt Wright’s home was bugged with listening devices and phone taps for three months as police sought evidence of a cover-up following a fatal helicopter crash, a jury has heard.
Covert recordings of Wright’s conversations have played a key part in his trial at the Supreme Court in Darwin.
The star of Outback Wrangler and helicopter operator has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
The charges follow a February 2022 chopper crash that killed Wright’s friend and co-star Chris “Willow” Wilson on a crocodile-egg collecting mission in the Northern Territory’s Arnhem Land.
Pilot Sebastian Robinson, 32, was left a paraplegic.
In one of the secretly recorded conversations played to the jury on Friday, Wright appears to tell an associate that Robinson was to blame for the crash which would cost the reality-TV star his air operator’s certificate.
“Old f—in’ Sebby’s dropped everyone,” Wright can be heard saying, prompting the associate to respond: “He’s thrown everyone under the bus?”
“The f—in’ lot, yep,” Wright replied.
The court has been told aviation crash investigators had concluded the helicopter ran out of fuel, shutting down the engine and causing it to plunge to the ground.
Robinson has vigorously denied that he failed to refuel the chopper.
Prosecutors allege Wright was worried investigators would learn his choppers’ flying-hour meters were regularly disconnected to extend flying hours beyond official thresholds and paperwork was falsified.
The charges against him do not relate to the cause of the accident and the prosecution does not allege he is responsible for the crash, Wilson’s death or Robinson’s injuries.
The jury on Friday heard from NT Police Detective Sergeant Timothy Gardiner that listening devices were installed at Wright’s home and phone taps made over three months between October and December 2022.
Some of the voice recordings from the listening devices have been hard to make out when played in the courtroom.
But Det Sgt Gardiner said he “absolutely” believed the transcripts he prepared accurately reflected what was said in the recordings.
He described how an Artificial Intelligence program provided transcripts of the phone recordings which he then verified and corrected by listening to the original soundtrack.
Senior defence counsel David Edwardson KC asked if it was possible his final transcripts might be influenced by AI transcripts in a process known as “priming” but the officer stood by the accuracy of his work.
Friday is expected to be the last day of evidence by the prosecution.
–AAP
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