Operation Savoy was an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) investigation into thefts of zoological specimens from the Australian Museum by Hendrikus ‘Hank’ van Leeuwen.
In the role van Leeuwen was primarily a pest controller, managing insects that could potentially damage collection items.
This role gave him unrestricted and unsupervised access to all of the Museum's 13 million zoological specimens, across its main College Street location and its external storage facility at Marrickville.
Museum management decided against an active internal investigation, concerned such a move would contravene government harassment policy without more definitive evidence.
[1][7][8] After van Leeuwen impressed Professor Michael Archer, the Museum's director, with his casting skills, he was moved to the palaeontology division as a moulder and caster on the 16 October 1999.
[7][8] An inventory was conducted in February 2002 of the Museum's CITES material, which noted 339 mammals, 32 reptiles and between 32 and 46 fish specimens were missing.
After an initial assessment, the commission had ‘strong indicators that an insider, Hank van Leeuwen’ was committing the thefts.
[7] Since van Leeuwen was employed by the Australian Museum, during the period of the thefts, he was considered a public official under the ICAC Act.
[7] The commission launched the investigation by first collating information about all the specimens that had gone missing, then they set up ‘covert surveillance’ of the Museum's collections.
After applications by Commissioner Irene Moss, search warrants of van Leeuwen's Londonderry home and separate properties in Newcastle and the South Coast were granted.
[3][7][9][10] Subsequently, Commissioner Moss authorised the conduct of private hearings, which allowed the commission to compel individuals to give evidence under oath.
On every monthly pest inspection of the Marrickville storage site he would take ‘as many skulls as the four wheel drive rear compartment would contain’.
[7] Van Leeuwen stated the thefts were motivated by his personal interests in maintaining his own collections, and during his interviews, noted that there ‘was no monetary gain in ‘em’ for himself.
Judge Berman stated that even if this was true that van Leeuwen did not directly cause the damage to the specimens, his act of stealing such a large volume of items which necessitated recovery by police officers, untrained in handling natural history specimens, made him responsible for the potential damage caused.
The recommendations covered the following areas:[7] The Office of the Auditor-General of New South Wales audited the Australian Museum's practices of knowing the whereabouts of their collection items in 2009.