Sex bribe scandal hits high-tech money maker

Photo / Dean Purcell

CANBERRA - A subsidiary of Australia's Reserve Bank has been accused of bribing foreign central bank officials and offering to supply prostitutes in a bid to win contracts for its polymer banknotes.

The allegations were made on ABC television last night by a key witness in a long-running Federal Police investigation into the international operations of Securency, which provides the polymer base for high security paper currency.

Its products are used for all Australian banknotes and for the currencies of almost 30 other countries, including New Zealand, whose notes are printed by sister RBA company Note Printing Australia.

The allegations have renewed calls by Greens Leader Bob Brown for an inquiry by the Senate economics committee, a proposal voted down by both main parties when it was raised last year.

"I call on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to stop blocking repeated Greens' moves for parliamentary scrutiny of these serious allegations," Brown said yesterday.

"The parliamentary cover-up by Canberra should end."

The Government said at the time of the earlier claims that the issue was one for the independent Reserve Bank, and yesterday declined comments on the allegations raised on the current affairs programme Four Corners last night after an investigation by the ABC and Melbourne's Age newspaper.

"Any allegation of bribery is serious and concerning, but there is a Federal Police investigation and it would be improper for me as a Government minister to comment while there's an investigation ongoing," Financial Services Minister Chris Bowen told Sky News.

Last year the Age reported that Securency had moved millions of dollars in commissions to bank accounts in offshore tax havens and other locations in its efforts to win international contracts for its polymer notes.

The company allegedly used suspect middlemen to secure deals in Asia, Africa and Latin America, several of whom had been involved in previous corruption scandals.

One had admitted reckless trading linked to fraud involved in the collapse of a large South African company, and another - who had also worked as an arms broker - had been dismissed by Note Printing Australia after an internal inquiry raised integrity concerns, the Age reported.

In last night's Four Corners programme, the Federal Police inquiry witness, a Securency employee, said he had been told by one of the company's middlemen that an Asian central bank governor was to be bribed.

A diary given by the witness to the Federal Police recorded the middleman as saying in 2007 that the "governor would be very happy if the commission [payment] was increased".

The witness also said that he had been told by a senior Securency manager to arrange an Asian prostitute for a visiting foreign central bank governor.

"[I was told that] next time that this official was in town that I was to procure him a bodyguard, and with raised eyebrows and a wink ... a particular type of bodyguard being an Asian woman," the witness said.

"He was suggesting I might like to procure a prostitute for one of the central bank officials on his visit to Melbourne." The witness said he had not provided a prostitute, but he believed other employees had.

A 2008 diary entry said that a consultant working in Asia for the overseas trade agency Austrade had told the witness that to win contracts Securency needed to hire someone to bribe officials, an allegation Austrade confirmed had been passed to the Australian ambassador in the country concerned, the Age reported.

Austrade said the report had never been brought specifically to its attention and that the agency had never endorsed bribery.

Malaysian Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim, and Nigerian central bank governor Lamido Sanusi, also told Four Corners that Canberra needed to reveal how far the bribery scandal reached.