Former CLP senator Sam McMahon is currently being sued by a federal audit body for allegedly breaching expenses policy and using taxpayer money to avoid mandatory COVID quarantine in Darwin, but the NT Independent can reveal she also failed to disclose paying her staffer $135,000 for a share of his Darwin unit, as part of an “unusual” arrangement.

Property records obtained by the NT Independent show Ms McMahon paid $135,000 to buy 30 per cent of her former staffer Ashley Manicaros’ Bayview unit, making the pair “tenants in common” on the property.

The deal was signed on December 13, 2021 – six months after Ms McMahon allegedly misappropriated travel expense money to travel around Queensland for two weeks with Mr Manicaros in June 2021, which the federal Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority investigated, finding she had “unjustly enriched” herself at the expense of taxpayers.

The authority is currently pursuing the matter in court to recoup the money.

Ms McMahon told the NT Civil and Administrative Tribunal in recently filed documents that Mr Manicaros had joined her for “the majority” of her time avoiding quarantine, but eventually went back to Darwin because he “did not have the funds to stay in QLD any longer”.

Ms McMahon did not list the investment in Mr Manicaros’ unit on her register of senators’ interests, despite having listed 11 properties in total when she entered the Senate in 2019. While she did update the sale of a property in Arizona in the US in March 2021, she never updated her register of interests to include the Bayview unit.

According to federal parliamentary rules, all senators must update any interests on their register within 35 days. Any senator who fails to report updated real estate interests within the 35 days is “guilty of a serious contempt of the Senate”, the rules state.

Title search certificate.

Further documents seen by the NT Independent show Ms McMahon was also put on Mr Manicaros’s mortgage for the unit in February 2022.

A local property expert who was shown the records said the arrangement was “unusual”.

“It’s quite unusual for someone who owns a tonne of other investment properties to purchase such a small share in a unit that hasn’t increased in value for 10 years,” they said.

“Usually, you would see a person guarantee a property, not go onto the mortgage, join the title and assume full liability and risk for payments on someone’s only home. Put another way, you could look around a long time and not see a boss buy a part of their employee’s home.”

Ms McMahon has denied using the address to claim any other travel expenses for time spent in Darwin and also denied cohabitating in the unit with Mr Manicaros.

She had a residence in Katherine listed on her senate register, with another 10 properties, including one in Lombok, Indonesia listed as investment properties, but not the Bayview unit.

Ms McMahon said she was not aware of any financial problems Mr Manicaros was having and said she did not discuss those matters with him, adding the $135,000 paid to him for 30 per cent of the unit was simply an investment decision and not a personal bail-out.

“I have no idea about his financial position and it wasn’t discussed,” she wrote in an email in response to questions.

“It was purely a commercial investment decision, he had an investor wanting to opt out and I took the opportunity to invest in it and receive market rent for my investment.

“I have never even seen the unit, which is not unusual as I have several other property investments bought sight unseen.”

She added she had also “never stayed there” and could not recall if she had declared the property interest to the Senate.

“I believe that I did disclose it, however, if it turns out that I did not, then there were mitigating circumstances at the time as to why that might not have happened.”

Records show she did not disclose it.

Ms McMahon did not explain further what the “mitigating circumstances” around her failure to disclose were. She added she did not believe the investment and partnership necessitated a conflict of interest.

In 2020, the CLP management team investigated allegations Ms McMahon was physically assaulted as part of a suspected domestic violence incident that occurred at a shared residence with her previous chief of staff and another man, the NT Independent revealed at the time.

Ms McMahon denied being in a relationship with her former staffer at the time and also indicated there was no intimate relationship with Mr Manicaros.

Ms McMahon will be back at the NTCAT in December where she is expected to defend allegations by the federal expenses authority that she “unjustly enriched herself at the expense” of taxpayers by claiming nearly $4,000 in travel expenses to roam around Queensland, which the agency found was done solely to “avoid quarantine requirements in the Northern Territory and Queensland” and could not be considered parliamentary business.

Mr Manicaros did not respond to questions, instead sending an email with a derogatory slur in it.