{"id":854755,"date":"2026-08-14T08:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T08:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/854755\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T08:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T08:20:11","slug":"police-lay-further-charges-against-former-cfmeu-boss-john-setka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/854755\/","title":{"rendered":"Police lay further charges against former CFMEU boss John Setka"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Police have laid further charges against former construction union boss John Setka, as part of their investigation into allegedly threatening and harassing emails sent to CFMEU administrators.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">The 61-year-old was arrested at his Footscray home on Friday morning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">He has since been charged with using a telecom communications device to menace, using a telecom communications device to offend and two charges of committing an indictable offence while on bail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Victoria Police allege the harassing and offensive comments were made online on Monday.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A man wearing a black jumper, shorts and thongs is led away by two police officers.\" class=\"Image_image__5tFYM ContentImage_image__DQ_cq\"  src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1c365d082549111cdae2482e3ca76e1c.jpeg\" loading=\"lazy\" data-component=\"Image\" data-lazy=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"Typography_base__sj2RP FigureCaption_text__zDxQ5 Typography_sizeMobile12__w_FPC Typography_lineHeightMobile20___U7Vr Typography_regular__WeIG6 Typography_colourInherit__dfnUx\" data-component=\"Typography\">Former union boss John Setka was arrested by police at his home in Footscray. (Supplied: Victoria Police)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Mr Setka was first arrested by investigators in November last year, and charged with seven counts of using a telecom communications device to menace, harass and offend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">He was charged again in February this year with using a carriage service to harass and commit an indictable offence whilst on bail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Police said they would allege additional threats were also made, and Setka was served with an intervention order in July.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Mr Setka was arrested by officers from what Victoria Police has dubbed Taskforce Hawk, which is investigating alleged criminal behaviour linked to the state&#8217;s construction industry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">He stood down as the head of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime and Energy Union (CFMEU) in Victoria in July 2024, after 12 years in the job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">The Albanese government later placed the union into administration following allegations it had engaged in bullying, corruption, and criminal infiltration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have laid further charges against former construction union boss John Setka, as part of their investigation into&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":854756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[197449,100471,79005,1108,424840,43,346238,44,205923,41,39,42,40,7893],"class_list":["post-854755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-administrators","tag-arrested","tag-cfmeu","tag-court","tag-harass-and-menace","tag-headlines","tag-john-setka","tag-news","tag-taskforce-hawk","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/854756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}