It’s perhaps inevitable that in a large family there might be one member who is a bit of a wild card.It’s more problematic when that family has a distinctive surname and one is a public figure.Dominic Perrottet has 12 siblings – and his younger brother Jean-Claude Perrottet has an uncanny ability to attract headlines.On Wednesday, Jean-Claude was the star witness at the Independent Commission against Corruption. It is investigating allegations that illegal donations were used to fund branch stacking within the NSW Liberal party by a shadowy organisation known as the Reformers, of which Jean-Claude was a key figure.It’s not his first stint in the spotlight.In 2017 Jean-Claude, then aged 20, was found not guilty of rape in the NSW district court.The charges stemmed from an alcohol-charged incident with a 19-year old woman following an end-of-year formal at St John’s College, Sydney University in 2015. The jury took less than two hours to find Perrottet not guilty.Rape cases sometimes get reported in the normal course, but because Dominic was then the youthful NSW treasurer in the Berejiklian government and the safety of women on campus was a subject of live public debate, it was regarded as highly newsworthy.By 2018, Jean-Claude Perrottet was doing a commerce degree at the University of NSW and had found employment with conservative Catholic parliamentarians. First it was in Damien Tudehope’s electorate office, then with upper house MP David Clarke, then in 2019, back to Tudehope in his ministerial office.He might have been a mere 21-year-old staffer, but Jean-Claude still made headlines.In 2019, the Sydney Morning Herald published articles about an alleged concerted effort by facets of the Liberal party’s hard right to undermine sitting members in several safe state and federal seats in Sydney’s north-west.The stories named Jean-Claude and fellow staffer Christian Ellis who were both employed at the time by Tudehope, then the minister for small business.That was the first time we heard of the NSW Reformers, a conservative group of Catholics alleged to be behind the stacking.Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email Both men left Tudehope’s office within months of the article’s publication.Despite trying to operate covertly, the Reformers have refused to fade into obscurity.In 2022 Liberal state MP Ray Williams, one of the Reformers’ targets, used a late night speech in parliament to raise allegations about the Reformers’ activities.Dominic Perrottet, by then the premier, referred it to Icac two days later.This must have been challenging for Dominic Perrottet. He would have known that, at the very least, Icac would likely question his little brother.But these were serious allegations raised by one of his own team, involving attempts to dislodge the Hills shire council and a developer, Jean Nassif, giving the Reformers “significant funds”.The NSW election was also only a few months away.The matter ended up in a parliamentary inquiry, just months before the 2023 election.As the inquiry ran, Dominic Perrottet continued to defend his brother - specifically allegations made during the inquiry that he tried to orchestrate a $50,000 branch-stacking operation to unseat federal Liberal MP Alex Hawke.Labor was “playing games with my family” and “political mud-slinging” ahead of a state election, an impassioned Dominic said at a media conference in 2023.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Leave my family out of it. Seriously,” he told reporters.“I’m here elected to represent the people of NSW. The Labor party are playing smear games with my family.”When Labor won the election, a Liberal controversy in the Hills faded into the noise of more immediate news.It’s taken another three years for Icac to begin its inquiry and on Wednesday Jean-Claude Perrottet was in the witness box.Under questioning, Jean-Claude disputed whether the Reformers were primarily involved in recruiting members for the purpose of branch stacking.But as the day wore on, he was presented with texts and documents showing he was integrally involved in deciding which branches recruits would join.Asked about a message in which Reformer Christian Ellis wrote “Two people happy to go into dodgy Branch”, Jean-Claude admitted this meant going into branches that were not controlled by the Right faction. Other messages recorded him nominating particular Liberal branches in Mitchell and Berowra, two federal seats.“Given the messages I’ve just taken you to over the course of 12 months or more, the question of which branches to place new members in in order to optimise results for the right faction occupied your mind to a considerable degree,” counsel assisting Juliet Curtin said.“Yeah, yeah, I thought about it quite a bit,” Jean-Claude replied.Jean-Claude was also quizzed about whether he knew that the ministerial staff code of conduct restricted staff from doing party political work while in taxpayer funded positions as staff.Jean-Claude said he had not read the document.Another document appeared to outline a plan to place Reformers in conservative MP offices in NSW parliament.It was put to Jean-Claude that “one of the ways that the Reformers were paid for their factional work was to be paid as ministerial staffers”.“No, I don’t agree,” Jean-Claude said.By the end of the day, the questioning had turned to the money trail. More questions are expected on Thursday when Jean-Claude continues his evidence.But it will not be the last we hear from a Perrottet. Another brother – Charles – is also named in one allegation and is expected as a witness later in the inquiry.Dominic Perrottet, who now lives overseas, is not accused of wrongdoing, while Jean-Claude Perrottet has denied wrongdoing.