Two properties linked to Melbourne businessman Andrew McManus have been raided by detectives from NSW and Victoria Police after claims by the controversial music promoter that he was the owner of $702,000 cash found in a Sydney hotel room in 2011.
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Documents tendered during a recent battle in the NSW Supreme Court for control of the money also revealed that McManus had received $450,000 from Perth bikie gang the Coffin Cheaters and implicated him in the Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman confirmed that a joint taskforce had executed warrants at McManus' business premises in Richmond and his Mornington Peninsula home on Thursday.
The spokeswoman said the warrants related to an ongoing NSW Police investigation.
Fairfax Media revealed last week that the prominent music industry figure made a series of startling admissions during an interview with NSW Police in April 2012 when questioned about the provenance of a suitcase stuffed with $10,000 bundles of cash totalling $702,000. McManus told police the money was his.
"I gave someone 700 large, and you've found someone with 700 large. It's my 700 large," he stated in court documents tendered in court.
He told police that the money was the proceeds from a Lenny Kravitz tour and he had used about 20 crew members to "sneak" the cash in from New Zealand.
"I'm not a dickhead but ... if this went to the ATO, I'd be cooked again," Mr McManus said to police.
During the 2012 interview, he told NSW police that if they came to his house "right now" they would find a safe with "600 large sittin' in it".
On Thursday, it would appear that police from NSW and Victoria made good on his offer and searched his home and office.
Mr McManus has not denied making the admissions, but has since claimed he was addled by morphine and alcohol at the time, despite being accompanied by his lawyer and former partner in a Sydney nightclub, Michael Croke.
Last month, Justice Richard Button denied an application for the money by former cage fighter and racehorse trainer Sean Carolan who is linked to McManus and was found with the cash at Sydney's Hilton Hotel in August 2011.
Carolan had been given the money by a US man Owen Hanson jnr who, in turn, had received the cash from convicted drug trafficker Craig Haeusler.
Haeusler is a long-term friend of McManus and was with him at the InterContinental hotel near Sydney's Circular Quay, where the two mates transferred $10,000 bundles from plastic shopping bags into a black suitcase.
Haeusler later told police that McManus was repaying Hanson, as he had provided a deposit for a ZZ Top tour promoted by McManus.
Mr McManus did not respond to requests for comment sent to his new promotion company One World Entertainment (O.W.E).
In 2011, his former company Andrew McManus Presents was put into liquidation with tax debts of $2.4 million after a string of failed ventures that lost more than $4 million.
He was forced to sell his Toorak mansion, holiday homes in Byron Bay and Burleigh Heads, and a private fleet of luxury cars, including a Bentley, Mercedes and Range Rover.
He relocated to Balnarring and drives a 30-year-old Rolls Royce given to him by US comedy legend Jerry Lewis.
