But authorities said he’s an unsuitable candidate due to his “limited” work ethic, his risk of reoffending, and the “moderate” prospect he would try to flee.
Foster, 46, was sentenced to four and a half years’ jail in Dec. 2007 after pleading guilty in the Queensland Supreme Court to a money laundering charge. He is eligible for parole on May 6.
Foster has gone back to the same court to challenge a Corrective Services decision to keep him as a high-security prisoner at Wolston Correctional Centre at Wacol, in Brisbane’s west.
The court is due to hear the matter on March 4. But in the meantime, Foster has pressed ahead with an application to be transferred to the Numinbah Correctional Center in the Gold Coast hinterland as a low-security prisoner.
In the application, he said his classification as a high-security prisoner is unlawful, unfair and lacks evidence. He also said Wolston jail managers previously told him he’d been recommended for a low-security classification.
The Sentence Management Review Panel — in a report filed to the court as part of Foster’s legal challenge — said he was a “moderate” escape risk. It also noted he had behaved appropriately in prison.
The general manager of Wolston jail, Kate Holman, said Foster was definitely not suitable for a spot at a low-security prison.
“(I) am of the opinion the offender is at risk of committing further offences,” she said in her response to Foster’s transfer application,” Holman said.
“The offender remains unemployed with current employment applications pending. “It is considered that this offender has limited work ethic and would therefore not be suitable for placement in a low-security facility.”
Foster was convicted of money laundering after bringing into Australia more than US$300,000 he had fraudulently obtained from the Bank of the Federated States of Micronesia.
During his original hearing, the court was told that Foster, who has previous convictions for fraud, took out a US$580,000 loan to develop a tourist resort on an island in Fiji. But it was revealed he used US$306,772 of the cash for other purposes including repaying his own credit card debt and outstanding rent on his girlfriend’s Gold Coast house.
Foster’s latest conviction followed a series of bizarre events in two Pacific countries. While being pursued by Fiji police for alleged fraud and immigration offences in October 2007, Foster jumped off a bridge into a river wearing only his underpants.
But he hit his head and was bundled, semi-conscious, into an open-air police truck. A Fiji court granted him bail, but he then failed to appear in court on two occasions.
He later turned up in Vanuatu. Witnesses told of watching a scantily clad Foster wade ashore from a vessel sitting off a remote Vanuatu beach, carrying a few belongings in a plastic bag.
He was ultimately arrested in a dramatic pre-dawn raid in Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila. After serving three weeks of a six-week sentence for illegally entering Vanuatu, he was sent home to Australia, where he was arrested on the Micronesia fraud charge.
