AMANDA POOLE sat in the witness box, her tanned arms crossed...

AMANDA POOLE sat in the witness box, her tanned arms crossed defensively across her smart black and white dress. No, she did not work at Arthur Phillip, her husband Richard's boutique investment bank. And no, she did not have ''a position at Arthur Phillip of any kind''. ''Do you work at all?'' she was asked. Again, Mrs Poole answered with a simple no.

For someone without a job, it must have come as a surprise that her taxable income last financial year was just under $6 million, suggested counsel assisting Geoffrey Watson, SC. But Mrs Poole, a former airline hostess, said she knew nothing about her finances. ''I only ever use my credit card because I get frequent flyer points,'' she told the Independent Commission Against Corruption. It is inquiring into whether Cascade Coal - owned by her husband and six others - was corruptly awarded an exploration licence in 2009 by the then mining minister Ian Macdonald. The commission has heard that the family of former Labor MP Eddie Obeid allegedly used inside information from Mr Macdonald to take a 25 per cent shareholding in Cascade Coal. Mr Poole's syndicate later negotiated a $60 million payment to remove the Obeids from Cascade.

''It came as a complete surprise,'' said Mrs Poole on learning that her NAB account had been used to channel millions of dollars to the Obeids as well as $1.75 million to an investment banker, Gardner Brook, who was representing the Obeids' interest in the coal deal.

''Didn't you think when you were reading the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald to say, 'hey, it says here that I paid $7.5 million to the Obeid family, what was that about?''' asked Mr Watson. ''I did ask that and my husband said: 'We absolutely or you absolutely did not'.'' Later in the witness box, Mr Poole also denied knowing that the money from his wife's account was going to the Obeids.