A RESERVE Bank currency firm was willing to supply prostitutes and pay bribes to win contracts, according to a federal police witness at the centre of Australia's most serious corruption investigation.
The revelation is one of many made by a key witness in the federal police inquiry into the Reserve Bank company, Securency International, which makes polymer banknotes.
The witness has told an investigation by The Age and ABC TV'sFour Corners - aired tonight - that a middleman hired by Securency to win contracts from foreign governments told him that he intended to bribe a central bank governor from an Asian country.
The witness, who was a Securency employee, has given the Australian Federal Police his diary in which he recorded the middleman telling him in 2007 that the ''governor would be very happy if the commission [payment] was increased''.
The witness has said that one of the most senior Securency managers told him to arrange an Asian prostitute for a visiting deputy governor of a foreign central bank.
''Next time that this official was in town, [I was told] that I was to procure him a bodyguard, and with raised eyebrows and a wink … a particular type of bodyguard being an Asian woman. He was suggesting I might like to procure a prostitute for one of the central bank officials on his visit to Melbourne,'' said the police witness in an interview with Four Corners. The witness said he did not act on the request although he believed other employees had arranged prostitutes.
In a 2008 diary entry, the witness recorded that a consultant employed in Asia by Australia's overseas trade agency Austrade told him that to win contracts Securency needed to hire someone to bribe officials or ''to pass white envelopes for you''.
Austrade this week confirmed the Securency employee-turned-police-witness did report the comment to an Australian ambassador in the Asian country where it was made in 2008, but said that it had never been brought specifically to Austrade's attention.
Austrade also stressed it had never endorsed bribery .
Securency is a Melbourne-based polymer banknote company half-owned and supervised by the Reserve Bank. It has employed a network of global agents to help it convince foreign central banks and governments to buy its banknotes.
A federal police taskforce is investigating Securency for allegedly bribing government officials in countries including Nigeria, Malaysia and Vietnam.
International figures, including former Malaysian deputy prime minister, now opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and Nigerian central bank governor Lamido Sanusi, have urged the Australian government to reveal how far the RBA's bribery scandal reaches. ''How could Securency allow … huge bribes in the name of commissions?'' Mr Ibrahim told Four Corners.
''It's something very difficult for me to comprehend, how is it a system [in Australia], with such a strong institution and respect for good government … could allow this,'' he said.
Labor and Coalition senators have voted against a motion by Greens leader Bob Brown for a parliamentary inquiry into Securency's overseas dealings.
In a 2008 diary excerpt by the police witness, a Securency employee is recorded as telling him the RBA firm paid very high commissions to middlemen to secure a contract in Nigeria because so many people were ''feeding off it''. ''A range of senior government ministry officials and central bank officials would've been getting a slice of that 20, 25 per cent commission,'' the witness said.
In March, the Securency board released a scathing audit of the company's dealings with its agents, who have received almost $50 million in commission payments since 2003. After the audit's release, the board, chaired by RBA assistant governor Bob Rankin, announced the departure of the two top executives, Myles Curtis and John Ellery.
See Four Corners tonight on ABC1 at 8.30 for more on the banknote scandal.
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