Whadjuk Aboriginal Corporation dismissed its chief executive Leon Ruri for speaking to the National Indigenous Times, legal correspondence obtained by this masthead shows. The comments he gave were compliments.

Key points:

• The board's own lawyer acknowledged "the fact" that the allegations against the CEO were never put to him
• Leon Ruri was dismissed over comments to this masthead that praised the corporation he led
• Members are now circulating resolutions to remove the board

The correspondence records that the serious misconduct allegations used to suspend him a month earlier were never put to him, a point the Corporation's own lawyer admits, and that they remained "to be investigated and resolved" on the day he was sacked. The board told its members a different story in a Facebook post to the Corporation's page just before 10pm on July 23.

The corporation Mr Ruri led speaks for the Traditional Owners of Boorloo, the Country on which Perth now stands. Created under the South West Native Title Settlement, the largest agreement of its kind in Australian history, Whadjuk Aboriginal Corporation manages cultural heritage across the metropolitan area, holds responsibilities over land and settlement funds, and leads the care of ancestral remains uncovered on Wadjemup, Rottnest Island. What happens inside it matters to thousands of Whadjuk Noongar people.

This is what happened during this most recent governance crisis - according to the documents National Indigenous Times has obtained.

How it began

On 10 May, Whadjuk chair Charne Hayden circulated via email notice of an extraordinary board meeting, set for ten o'clock the next morning. Its purpose was to terminate the chief executive. One director, in Port Hedland for work, received less than 16 hours' notice and could not attend.

The notice contained allegations Mr Ruri says he was seeing for the first time. They were serious, including a claim that he had shown explicit material on his phone to a male delegate during a corporation trip to Aotearoa / New Zealand. Mr Ruri denies every allegation. No finding has been made against him.

"The first that I knew about all of these allegations was on May 10, when Charne Hayden sent that notice out," he said through his lawyer.

The motion to sack him failed. The board suspended him on pay instead, pending an investigation. The suspension was delivered verbally, his lawyers say, and the allegations never reached him in writing.

The article

On 20 May, National Indigenous Times reported the turmoil inside Whadjuk Aboriginal Corporation: the contested suspension, the resignation of two directors that followed it, and a default notice from the corporation's trustee. Four directors were quoted, some sharply critical of the process used against Mr Ruri.

Mr Ruri featured too. Contacted by phone by National Indigenous Times, he declined to discuss details of board matters and offered only praise for the organisation he led.

"I am proud of the strong outcomes achieved under my leadership for Whadjuk people and community," he said.

"During my tenure, the organisation has rebuilt its reputation, secured more contracts than ever before, and achieved record heritage revenue projected to exceed $2 million this year, directly benefiting more families than ever."

Those comments ended his career at the Corporation.

An investigation into a newspaper article

On 5 June, law firm Gibson Lyons notified Mr Ruri's lawyer that the corporation had engaged it to investigate allegations against him. Its questions concerned a different subject: the 20 May National Indigenous Times article.

One passage drew particular attention, this publication's paraphrase that Mr Ruri "strongly rejected the process used against him and says he was not provided with evidence or afforded a reasonable opportunity to respond." The firm gave the passage a label, the "Express Criticism", and asked Mr Ruri to explain it.

His answer, then and now, is that the criticism was never his.

"I got terminated for 'express criticism' for a comment they're attributing to me which was not my comment," he said. "It was actually the other directors who made the comments about the process not being fair."

His lawyer, Michael Baldwin of Baldwin Legal, told the firm there had been no interview. Mr Ruri answered a phone call, said nothing about board matters, and spoke positively because he "did not want to simply say no comment and have that negatively construed".

Gibson Lyons read the response as an admission. His failure to specifically deny the paraphrase, the firm wrote, "suggests that he did make the Express Criticism".

On 11 June, Baldwin Legal warned the board that a month had passed since the suspension with no written allegations provided. The firm described "a complete lack of provision of procedural fairness" and "a fundamental flaw in WAC's workplace investigation", and cautioned that termination before a proper investigation would likely bring legal action.

The dismissal

The board terminated Mr Ruri the next day.

The stated ground was the May 20 article. Giving an interview while suspended, and the "express criticism" in particular, led the board to conclude he "has or may have brought WAC into disrepute, caused disharmony in the Noongar or wider community and constituted misconduct sufficient to immediately terminate his employment". The Corporation's motor vehicle was to be collected from his home at 5pm that day.

The letter conveying the dismissal opened by acknowledging Mr Baldwin's criticism of "the fact that the allegations leading to your client's suspension on 11 May 2026 have not yet been put to him". It did not dispute the point. The article, it said, had "became the more immediate issue requiring explanation", and had satisfactory answers been given, "the other issues would remain to be investigated and resolved".

The allegations that began the affair sat unresolved on the day he was dismissed over speaking to the media.

The account given to members

The board's statement to members of 23 July described the sequence in these terms: Mr Ruri was stood down "while those matters were investigated", "a third-party investigator was subsequently appointed", further matters came to the board's attention, and "after obtaining legal advice, the Board resolved to summarily dismiss Mr Ruri on the 12th of June 2026".

The statement did not tell members the dismissal rested on his comments to this publication. It did not tell them the original allegations had never been put to him.

The only investigator identified in the correspondence is Gibson Lyons, the board's own retained law firm.

Mr Ruri has instructed his lawyers to commence proceedings.

"They presented nothing to me. I've never been presented with anything before they terminated me. That's the absolute truth," he said.

The regulator arrives

Aboriginal corporations answer to a federal regulator, the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations, known as ORIC. It is now asking questions of its own.

As National Indigenous Times reported on 10 July, ORIC wrote to Whadjuk after the board rejected a members' petition for a general meeting, for the second time. The law governing Aboriginal corporations gives members the right to require such a meeting, and it does not give boards the power to refuse. Refusal, ORIC told the corporation, was "not within the power of the Board"; "only the Registrar can grant permission to a corporation to deny a meeting request".

The board had taken about two months to respond to its members. Its rejection letter, the regulator noted, "does not make any attempt to engage with members about the expressed grievances".

Whadjuk declined to answer this publication's questions about the ORIC letter.

"The Corporation has made the decision not to engage with the National Indigenous Times on matters of this nature," interim chief executive Dominic Panaia wrote.

The members move

Among Whadjuk members, patience has run out. A fresh request for a general meeting is circulating, the third in twelve months. It proposes removing directors Charne Hayden, Colin Garlett, Wayne Ryder and Denice Kickett, electing a new board, and rewriting the corporation's rule book.

The eighteen proposed rule changes read as a point-by-point answer to the past year: written reasons for board decisions affecting members, a register of directors' interests open to any member, annual reporting on who receives heritage work and what directors are paid, member consultation before land dealings, and a rule spelling out that the board cannot refuse a members' meeting request without the Registrar's permission.

The nominated contact for the request is Reg Yarran, the Corporation's former chair.

The article at the centre of Mr Ruri's dismissal was published by this publication and National Indigenous Times stands by its reporting. No findings of wrongdoing have been made against Mr Ruri, and the allegations against him remain untested and disputed.