The ACT's corruption watchdog has found no suspicion of corruption in the way the government handled controversial buy-ups of former lakeside businesses, including the former paddle boats shed at West Basin.
The Integrity Commission began the investigation on the back of an audit report which found the purchase of the businesses lacked transparency and accountability.
The Auditor-General's 2016 report was also critical of more than $2.6 million in payments to consultants which were made without competitive quotes.
But the Integrity Commission found there was nothing that gave "rise to a suspicion on reasonable grounds that corrupt conduct has occurred".
The commission's report started after a Legislative Assembly committee investigated the Auditor-General's report and came to the same conclusion. The committee chair referred the report to the commission.
The purchase of the lakeside blocks was for the territory government's "City to the Lake" project and these were managed by the now-defunct Land Development Agency. The government has since reclaimed land from the lake near where the businesses operated.
The Land Development Agency paid $1 million for one of the businesses, following two valuations in early 2015 of $50,000 and $100,000. In November that year, Colliers provided a third valuation in the range of $900,000 to $1 million.
The commission also examined the Auditor-General's conclusions $2.66 million in payments from the Land Development Agency made to consulting firm, E11even, which was associated with former City to the Lake project director Tim Xirakis.
But the Integrity Commission found "no reasonable suspicion of corrupt conduct" in regards to the purchases.
The commission also concluded there was no adequate basis for further inquiries into the acquisition of the blocks.
The commission's investigation was prompted by a damning report from the ACT Auditor-General in 2016, which found the purchase of the blocks lacked transparency and accountability. An ACT Legislative Assembly committee came to the same conclusions in 2019 following an inquiry.
Former Liberal member Vicki Dunne, who chaired that inquiry, referred the matter to the Integrity Commission and this was catalyst for the investigation.
"There is nothing in the reports either of the Auditor-General or the committee that give rise to a suspicion on reasonable grounds that corrupt conduct has occurred," the commission's report said.
The Integrity Commission said the Auditor-General was right to be critical of a lack of paperwork and records of communication related to the deals but this did not raise a reasonable suspicion of corruption.
"It is significantly less than comprehensive," the commission's report said.
"The failure to make records of significant processes or explaining decisions is certainly a failure of governance but, as it happened, it has not precluded the ability to draw reasonable inferences from other surrounding evidence as to what occurred sufficiently for present purposes."
The report from the commission followed an earlier report, released in 2022, into the acquisition of a Glebe Park block for $4.2 million, which was four times the amount of one valuation.
The commission also found no reasonable suspicion of corrupt conduct in that report.
