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The grotesquery of corruption within our banking systems seems endless, writes contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence, with vaultlines leading to the Reserve Bank of Australia.
THE CORPORATE sanctioned muck of fraud, bribery, collusion, mutual scrotum and back scratching could not exist without corrupt bedfellows in the national executive elite.
It could not flourish without the rich and powerful and those who aspire to be like them, or without the various regulatory and policing bodies, institutions, the judiciary, the legal system, state and federal governments and people who are prepared to lie before they buy and sell silence — such are their shares and stock in trade.
On Saturday, Australians wake up to yet more explosive revelations in Fairfax publications that, in an ongoing saga, compounds all and more of the above:
AUSTRALIA’s corporate watchdog bungled its handling of the nation’s biggest bribery scandal by failing to interview a single relevant witness and misspelling the lead police investigator’s name in emails, leaving crucial correspondence stalled or unread.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission announced in March that it would not act on a federal police referral to investigate the RBA bank note scandal, despite the AFP and government lawyers finding compelling grounds to do so.
The Saturday Age can reveal that so strong is the evidence of possible corporate malfeasance that prior to referring the matter to ASIC, the federal police considered taking the rare step of getting a special delegation from the Gillard government to investigate corporate law offences.
ASIC’s failure to conduct the most basic of investigations into the matter has not only infuriated senior law enforcement sources in Canberra, but left a major part of Australia’s worst corporate corruption scandal untouched. It has also sparked questions about whether the intense political sensitivities that could flow from a probe that ensnared top serving and former RBA officials has influenced ASIC’s conduct.
It is a ploy of fraudsters, banks and their lawyers and police and others included, to deliberately do the following: misspell a name, incorrectly date a letter, incorrectly address a letter, delay service, fabricate service — as I can attest in my own experiences with the National Australia Bank.
Australians have a right to expect ASIC to act on our behalf.
But cop this:
A senior legal source aware of evidence implicating some of the directors of allegedly corrupt RBA subsidiaries Securency and Note Printing Australia said it was ”very strong” and included the reckless approval of payments to a suspected corrupt arms dealer and to front companies in known tax havens.
Yesterday The Age revealed that several directors of both companies – including top RBA officials – were told of explicit bribery and corporate corruption concerns in 2007 but chose not to call police.
The article, written by Richard Baker, Nick McKenzie and Maris Beck, is the latest in an outstanding and ongoing investigation that even in its early days should have prompted an immediate response from our government and the authorities — and the mainstream media.
Last year, with a two-part article published in The Age on August 11 entitled ‘RBA held evidence of bribery / Who knew what when’, Baker and McKenzie won a Walkley Award for their painstaking work.
On the same night, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange also won a Walkley for the most outstanding services to journalism.
He was in good company.
Baker and McKenzie have led this forensic investigation and both they and The Age are to be congratulated not only for their services to journalism, but also because of their services to the Australian people.
They have done what the Board of the Reserve Bank, the Government, the police and ASIC have all failed to do, have refused to do and that is, to investigate and act on the matter.
But where is everyone? Where are our political guardians? And I don’t mean just for today?
Where were they months and years ago, when Baker and McKenzie first held a Securency note to the light to see if it was fair dinkum?
The Age quotes Independent Senator Nick Xenophon as questioning ”the extent ASIC has been blindsided by the fact that these allegations involve subsidiaries of the Reserve Bank”.
”It seems extraordinary that given the seriousness of these allegations and what is at stake here, that not one relevant witness has been interviewed by ASIC,” Senator Xenophon said. ”This is serious enough to warrant a special taskforce from ASIC.”
Well, I reckon you’re on the money, Senator.
But where was Prime Minister Gillard? (Without question I am not referring here to her private sadness and absence from the public stage. Like millions, I empathise so very much with her at this yuck time and wish her and her family great strength and have only kind thoughts, my condolences and no platitudes)
Where was Attorney General Nicola Roxon?
Where was former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd?
Where is Foreign Minister Bob Carr?
Where was former Greens Leader Bob Brown and where is Christine Milne?
Where is the Leader of the Coalition Tony Abbott? He should be punching the lights out of the Reserve Bank of Australia and ASIC, metaphorically of course.
Where is Bob Carr’s jealous rival for the top job? Julie only has to lose one more shoe (two so far) and he’s hoping he’ll be a shoe-in. We’re talking globe-winning treasurer here, Wayne Swan.
Doesn’t he care?
Where’s Coalition Treasurer Joe Hockey?
And where’s the Finance Minister Penny Wong?
Where’s the Chairman of ASIC, Greg Medcraft?
Where’s the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Tony Negus?
Where’s the Director-General of ASIO, David Irvine?
Where’s the Director-General of ASIS, Nick Warner?
Well, there you go girls and boys, I’ve given you the starter pack for Reserve Bank of Australia Investigation 101. Now go forth and multiply, as I tell my students.
Oh, and I think I’ve spelled the names correctly.
But I know what you’re thinking. That I haven’t mentioned the Chief of the Reserve Bank of Australia himself, Glenn Stevens.
The fact is, the disgraceful and entrenched misconduct of some sections of the RBA were done in the name of the Australian people. Once again, we have been ill-served.
The moral and political cowardice of ASIC is offensive in the extreme. Who do we turn to when our corporate watchdog appears to have been debarked.
What I want to know is, whose is the tail that wags the watchdog?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
25 Comments
What a pity. The polymer notes that Securency was bribing foreign officials to adopt was invented by the CSIRO.
http://www.csiropedia.csiro.au/display/CSIROpedia/Polymer+banknotes
One would have thought that this product of genius and hard work would have sold itself.
As for the RBA, this is the mob whose only task is to set the cash rate quarterly, an instrument now ignored by the banks.
The RBA senior management and technocrats also presume to pontificate on the appropriate structure of the Australian economy (they applaud uncritically the current cargo cult emphasis on resources exports), while having no training relevant to the task.
At the top, Mr Stevens, on a staggering $1 million a year.
He is usually photographed looking deep in thought, the quiet mastermind at work. Copy of another mastermind, Alan Greenspan, who turned out to be not only incompetent but corrupt as well.
The media is thus complicit in giving these bods an authority they don’t deserve.
Although here is Faifax’s Michael West with a couple of vignettes.
* RBA pumps up troubled Big 4 (and disadvantaging the rest, the divergence now set in stone): 11 February 2012;
http://www.smh.com.au/business/banks-deep-pockets-short-arms-and-shorter-memories-20120210-1sm17.html
* RBA supports BankWest in late 2008 until it can fix the CBA takeover (denied by all involved): 13 February 2012;
http://www.smh.com.au/business/rba-kept-bankwest-alive-20120212-1szsz.html
* information on RBA and government support for the banks disappears from official sites: 24 December 2011;
http://www.smh.com.au/business/a-bureaucracy-gone-berserk-20111223-1p8h6.html
* in particiular, bank support data disappears from RBA website, 23 February 2012;
http://www.smh.com.au/business/document-purge-leaves-us-all-in-the-dark-20120223-1tpfx.html
And here we were thinking that it was only the regulators in the US (SEC, the Fed) that were hopelessly implicated in the imbroglio of incompetence on corruption on a grand scale engineered by their financial masters of the universe.
NAB & WESTPAC ALMOST COLLAPSED DURING GFC
WHERE WAS/IS ASIC AND THE RBA IN THIS ?
WHO ARE THEY PROTECTING AND WHY?
AND WHY IS MAINSTREAM MEDIA & OTHER ONLINE SITES IGNORING THIS
BLISTERING FACT ?
WHY DOESN’T THE GOVERNMENT DENY IT ?
NAB and Westpac almost collapsed during the GFC
Posted by admin in Finance, Media on 11 January, 2012 2:33 pm
Did you know that the NAB and Westpac almost collapsed during the GFC and had to be bailed out by the US Treasury?
No? Well, it’s true.
Both banks were bailed out by the US — receiving several billion dollars each because they were facing massive liquidity and solvency problems. This was cofirmed by a Senate Committee investigation in 2010. Of course, it wasn’t reported in the mainstream press — which, if not corrupt, is highly incompetent and easily deceived.
Here’s what Kris Sayce from MoneyMorning Australia said in the introduction to an article about this alarming development, and its subsequent cover-up:
If you haven’t found the time to read the transcripts from the Senate economics select committee I suggest you find the time.
Simply because comments from two National Australia Bank [ASX: NAB] executives confirm – that’s right, confirm – everything we’ve written about NAB’s secret bailouts in 2008 and 2009.
You can download the transcript by clicking here.
We told you the banks need the loans because they faced a massive liquidity and solvency problem.
Our critics said we were talking rubbish. That we had finally lost our marbles.
They tried to say NAB was just being cheeky. That is was snaffling Federal Reserve loans on the cheap. They said NAB did what any back should do, take the opportunity to borrow low and lend high.
We countered the argument by explaining how bank borrowing works. How banks have to roll over debt on a regular basis. If there’s a problem with rolling the debt over, then, well, it can leave a bank in the lurch.
We showed you how NAB and Westpac [ASX: WBC] had stood hunched shoulder to hunched shoulder with other troubled banks. Banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland, LloydsTSB, Citibank and ABN Amro.
Believe me, the admission I’ll show you in a moment is dynamite. It’s an admission straight from the horses’ mouths. That the Australian banking system was in dire trouble in late 2008.
Yet where is the Australian mainstream press on this story?
Good question. Nowhere. The mainstream press conspired with the banks and regulators to sweep the secret loans scandal under the carpet. And now they’ve done the same with the Senate committee statements.
Read the rest of this exposé by clicking here.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/business/media-2/nab-and-westpac-almost-collapsed-during-the-gfc/
NAB SECRETLY BORROWS US$1.5BILLION PER DAY FOR 252 DAYS STRAIGHT – FROM THE US FED TO SURVIVE.
WHERE’S MAINSTREAM MEDIA ? WHERE’S NAB PR KILL MACHINE ? WHERE’S
THE RBA ? WHERE’S ASIC ? WHERE’S APRA ? WHERE’S ANYBODY ?
CHECK OUT THIS, FROM BARNABY IS RIGHT: –
For a total 252 days straight, between 6 November 2008 and 15 July 2009, National Australia Bank survived by secretly borrowing USD1.5 billion per day from the US Fed
Westpac, NAB Survive On US Federal Reserve Life Support
24 Dec
BREAKING NEWS
UPDATE: Aggregate balance of US Fed loans to Westpac = USD87.52 billion, NAB = USD378 billion (csv file 1e_Fed Dated Estimated Income Ranking Text Only)
From Bloomberg:
Fed’s once-secret data released to the public
Bloomberg News today released spreadsheets showing daily borrowing totals for 407 banks and companies that tapped Federal Reserve emergency programs during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. It’s the first time such data have been publicly available in this form.
To download a zip file of the spreadsheets, go to http://bit.ly/Bloomberg-Fed-Data. For an explanation of the files, see the one labeled “1a Fed Data Roadmap.”
The day-by-day, bank-by-bank numbers, culled from about 50,000 transactions the U.S. central bank made through seven facilities, formed the basis of a series of Bloomberg News articles this year about the largest financial bailout in history.
“Scholars can now examine the data and continue the analysis of the Fed’s crisis management,” said Allan H. Meltzer, a professor of political economy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the author of three books on the history of the U.S. central bank.
The data reflect lending from the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the discount window and single-tranche open market operations, or ST OMO.
Bloomberg News obtained information about the discount window and ST OMO through the Freedom of Information Act. While the Fed initially rejected a request for discount-window information, Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, filed a federal lawsuit to force disclosure and won in the lower courts. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to intervene in the case, and the Fed released more than 29,000 pages of transaction data.
As we saw in “Our Banking System Operates With Zero Reserves”, a previous data release showed that Australian banks … including the Reserve Bank of Australia … secretly borrowed billions from the US Federal Reserve to survive during the GFC. In the case of the RBA, the value of its loans totalled around AUD88 billion given the exchange rate at that time:
National Australia Bank Ltd, Westpac Banking Corp Ltd and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) were all recipients of emergency funds from the US Federal Reserve during the global financial crisis, according to media reports.
Data released by the Fed shows the RBA borrowed $US53 billion in 10 separate transactions during the financial crisis, which compares to the European Central Bank’s 271 transactions, according to a report in The Australian Financial Review.
NAB borrowed $US4.5 billion, and a New York-based entity owned by Westpac borrowed $US1 billion, according to The Age.
This new data release allows us to see more detail about the secret loans to Westpac and NAB.
Two of the four pillars of our allegedly “safe as houses” banking system.
And now we can see that it wasn’t just a “New York-based entity owned by Westpac” that borrowed from the Fed. It was Westpac itself.
Between 20 Dec 2007 and 16 Jan 2008, Westpac secretly borrowed USD90 million per day from the US Federal Reserve. Between 9 Oct 2008 and 1 Jan 2009, Westpac borrowed USD1 billion per day. For a total of 113 days, Westpac was surviving on daily loans from the US Fed:
For a total 252 days straight, between 6 November 2008 and 15 July 2009, National Australia Bank survived by secretly borrowing USD1.5 billion per day from the US Fed:
[Don't forget that during the GFC, the AUD plummeted from 98c to the USD, to 60c ... where the RBA actively bought AUD's in order to keep it propped at 60c. So these USD quoted loans were in fact dramatically higher when considered in light of the relative value of the Aussie dollar at the time]
Half of our “Four Pillar” bankstering system survived on USD2.5 billion per day of US Fed-supplied life support during the peak GFC “fear” period … and in NAB’s case, for many months afterwards.
And all on the hush hush.
We’d never know about it, except for Bloomberg News taking the US Fed to court when they refused an FOI request for the information.
How’s your con-fidence in our AAA-rated Ponzi now?
If you’ve not read it yet, and if like most Aussies you are oblivious to the hushed up bank run that was occurring right here in Oz during the GFC, then you should take the time to read my June 24 blog, “Our Banking System Operates With Zero Reserves”:
Ian Harper, one of Australia’s leading financial economists, spent much of the weekend of October 11-12, 2008, reassuring journalists that Australian banks were safe.
But there was something about the calls Harper was getting from reporters over that weekend that worried him.
“There was a whiff of panic,” he recalls. It had been building all week. He had no doubt that the government and the Reserve Bank would be able to manage a run on cash, but it might take days to arrest. Panic has been an unpredictable force in the history of banking. And the instant world of electronic banking had never been tested with a full-scale crisis of confidence.
He talked about media calls with his wife. “Come Monday morning and they tell us one of the banks is in strife and internet banking is down, I can’t look you in the eye and say you can pay this week’s grocery bills.”
The man who had just been reassuring everyone there was nothing to worry about went down the street to the ATM and made a sizeable withdrawal to make sure his wife would have enough cash.
All around the country, banks were facing unusual demands for cash. Small businesses in Queensland and Western Australia were switching their deposits from regional banks to accounts with the big four banks.
An elderly woman turned up in the branch of one bank in Queensland with a suitcase and asked to withdraw her term deposits of $100,000 or more. Once filled, she took the suitcase down to the other end of the counter and asked that it be kept in the bank’s safe.
A story did the rounds of the regulators about a customer who wanted to withdraw his six-figure savings. The branch manager said he did not have that quantity of cash on hand, but offered a bank cheque, which the customer accepted, apparently unaware that the cheque was no safer than the bank writing it.
It was a silent run, unnoticed by the media. Across the country, at least tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of depositors were withdrawing their funds. Left unchecked, there would soon be queues in the street with police managing crowd control, as occurred in London at the Golders Green branch of Northern Rock a year earlier.
“With a bank run, or any rumour of a bank run, you can’t play games with that,” says Treasury Secretary Ken Henry.
“You can’t pussyfoot around that stuff. It’s a long time since Australia has had a serious run on a financial institution, but it’s all about confidence, and you cannot allow an impression to develop generally in the public that there is any risk.”
Now, what was it that I wrote just hours ago … about our AAA-rated Ponzi economy?
http://barnabyisright.com/2011/12/24/westpac-nab-survive-on-us-fed-life-support/
STOP PRESS!
GLENN STEVENS CALLED BEFORE PARLIAMENT!
RESERVE Bank governor Glenn Stevens, his former deputy and the whistleblower who exposed alleged corruption inside the bank’s subsidiaries will all be called to testify about the scandal before Federal Parliament.
Read more by RICHARD BAKER, MARIS BECK AND NICK MCKENZIE: http://www.theage.com.au/national/rba-boss-to-be-grilled-on-scandal-20120917-262wa.html#ixzz26jyaMeXa
Nice work Tess, hope you are surviving sans house.
Scary to think that I had money in ubank, which is backed by NAB, but probably explains how they could service the extraordinarily high interest rates I was getting – 6.7% at one stage!
Dear EVAN JONES, thank you for your forensic sleuthing – this is extraordinary – the RBA redacting its website in this way.
We know the NAB has done the same thing and Lynton Freeman has exposed this here on IA.
I hope this evidence is discussed in Parliament and that GLENN STEVENS is called to account for the removal of this information that does not belong solely to the RBA – it is the property of the Australian people.
All the links you’ve given us – as well as your precis below – are wonderful and a great help to us all and the many bank victims who
don’t know where to start looking.
This is very helpful Evan – and much appreciated.
NAB REDACTS WEBSITE TO HIDE CUSTOMER REFUNDS –
HERE’S A LINK TO LYN FREEMAN’S STORY
National Australia Bank redacts website to hide customer refunds
Posted by admin in Finance, Investigations, Law on 1 April, 2012 10:40 am
The NAB seems to have been caught out doctoring its website to remove details about refunds they are legally obliged to publish. Lyn Freeman reports.
‘It seems the National Australia Bank (NAB) has been caught out doctoring its website over its APRA enforced customer refunds.’
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/independent-australia-journal/investigations/national-australia-bank-redacts-website-to-hide-customer-refunds/
Dear GEO, thanks for your comment, I note you write you ‘ had ‘ money in UBank – owned by the NAB.
Does that mean you no longer have an account with them ?
I still have the money with ubank. Poor English, by ‘had’ I meant ‘had during the GFC’. I remember being worried about it, but then feeling somewhat confident as they were ‘backed by the NAB’ and reading that Australian banks were well regulated and insulated from what was going on overseas. I wonder is ubank safe now? Perhaps I should move the money elsewhere though, on moral grounds.
Dear GEO, merci for the clarification.
If you have the chance I urge you to read the many articles about the NAB and other banks and banking written by myself and others, including ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR EVAN JONES, LYN FREEMAN and DAVID DONOVAN and others.
Your comments and input are very welcome Geo, and it is heartening to know that as a customer, you are concerned with moral matters – that is more than I can say about the NAB.
CUBBIE STATION AND THE NATIONAL AUSTRALIA BANK
BARNABY JOYCE: The administrator’s role is to make sure that they do the best job for the National Australia Bank and the National Australia Bank’s role is to make sure they get the best return back for their shareholders.
And you can only get the best return if you’re absolutely certain there wasn’t a better return out there in the marketplace.
Now, if there are another 12 bids, there are 12 things that that is incumbent upon both the receivers and the National Australia Bank to property investigate.
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3592905.htm
CHERCHEZ LA FEMME
THE SPY AND THE DIPLOMAT
THE RBA & SPIES,LIES,MEGA MILLION DOLLAR BRIBES
The below is a quote and link from an article by NICK MCKENZIE and RICHARD BAKER in THE AGE.
A HIGH-RANKING Australian embassy official had a secret affair with a Vietnamese spy colonel accused of receiving up to $20 million in suspected bribes from a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/trade-official-in-spy-sex-scandal-20120812-242sm.html#ixzz26tHIdSJm
THE MONARCH OF THE GLENN.
WOULD THAT BE GLENN STEVENS OF THE RBA ?
YOU BETCHA!
With thanks to NICK MCKENZIE & RICHARD BAKER of THE AGE: –
NEW internal documents have contradicted parliamentary testimony by Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens that the bank knew nothing about the Securency banknote scandal before it became public in 2009.
Key parts of Mr Stevens’ testimony about the RBA’s knowledge of the scandal – he has claimed bank officials knew nothing of Securency’s alleged corruption before Fairfax’s expose of the scandal in 2009 – conflict with newly uncovered documents.
The scandal involves RBA companies Securency and Note Printing Australia, charged last year with bribing foreign officials to win banknote contracts.
The sensitive documents that contradict Mr Stevens’ parliamentary testimony, and raise further questions about the governance standards at the RBA and its subsidiaries, come from the central bank’s files.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/papers-refute-rba-chief-20120911-25q6x.html#ixzz26uFuDvLE
DESPITE ALL, THE RBA STILL MADE A PROFIT AND GIVES CANBERRA $500 MILLION
Clancy Yeates from THE AGE website: –
‘Mr Stevens said the bank was still feeling the effects of these earlier hits to its balance sheet, and the Treasurer had decided to direct a significant proportion of its earnings to a buffer fund, with $500 million in dividends going to Canberra.’
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/the-economy/rba-sends-500m-cheque-to-canberra-20120920-268yf.html#ixzz27165g5qH
YES,WE ANH!
AUSTRADE’S ELIZABETH MASAMUNE AND THE SPY WHO LOVED HER.
MORE IN THE RBA/SECURENCY SAGA
From THE AGE’s MARIS BECK: –
‘She said in the statement she had two ”isolated” sexual interactions with spy Colonel Anh Ngoc Luong, who had helped to secure a banknote contract and whom federal police allege received up to $20 million in bribes from the Reserve Bank’s half-owned subsidiary Securency.’
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/trade-envoy-admits-affair-with-spy-20120924-26hhl.html#ixzz27TaLPs00
YOUR RBA – ABOVE THE LAW ?
From today’s AGE website by MARIS BECK
Reserve ‘told’ lawyers to ensure official not too helpful to police
September 28, 2012
Maris Beck
THE Reserve Bank directed lawyers to ensure that its only senior official to provide a statement to police did ”not provide any more assistance than was necessary”, a court has heard.
Committal proceedings against eight former executives from Reserve Bank subsidiary companies, who have been charged with conspiring to bribe foreign officials in exchange for banknote contracts, also revealed that the Reserve Bank itself had direct contact with the State Bank of Vietnam and Vietnamese intelligence officer Colonel Anh Ngoc Luong dating back to 2005.
Colonel Anh, who was contracted as an agent for the bank’s half-owned company Securency, is accused of having arranged up to $20 million in bribes for state bank officials in Vietnam who awarded Securency a lucrative banknote supply deal. Securency is understood to still supply banknote materials to Vietnam.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/reserve-told-lawyers-to-ensure-official-not-too-helpful-to-police-20120927-26o6h.html#ixzz27iSNELJB
RBA USED SPY.
MEDIA UPDATE: –
Austrade suspected Vietnam agent was a spy
The Australian government had long-standing suspicions that a Reserve Bank company was using a foreign intelligence officer as a sales agent, but continued to deal with him, a court has heard.
Former senior trade commissioner to Vietnam Patrick Stringer was cross-examined yesterday during a committal hearing involving eight former Reserve Bank company executives accused of false accounting or conspiring to bribe foreign officials — through “commission payments” to overseas agents — to win banknote contracts.
When asked about a 2007 Austrade report stating that Securency agent Colonel Anh Ngoc Luong had “probable” links to the Vietnamese intelligence service, Mr Stringer said: “We had known — we the embassy had had suspicions of his status for many years.”
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/austrade-suspected-vietnam-agent-was-a-spy-20121002-26xeh.html#ixzz288hL9L00
THE RESERVE BANK OF AUSTRALIA –
* WHISTLEBLOWER BRIAN HOOD WROTE TO RBA GOVERNOR GLENN STEVENS
* FORMER DEPUTY GOVERNOR RIC BATTELLINO TOLD HOOD NOT TO SPEAK OF
CORRUPTION
Read more in today’s AGE by NICK MCKENZIE and RICHARD BAKER
‘The whistleblower who exposed alleged corruption at Reserve Bank currency printing subsidiaries has revealed he wrote directly to governor Glenn Stevens last year to express his frustration over his mis-treatment.
Former Note Printing Australia executive Brian Hood has also revealed to a parliamentary committee that he was warned in 2008 by the RBA’s deputy governor—the recently retired Ric Battellino— never to speak about the corruption issues that he had uncovered.’
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/whistleblower-raised-victimisation-with-rba-chief-20121004-270u4.html#ixzz28KcTKx6u
ADDITIONAL INFO FROM THE RBA WEBSITE:
RIC BATTELLINO was Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia from 14 February 2007 to 13 February 2012. He was also at that time Deputy Chairman of the Reserve Bank Board, and Chairman of the Reserve Bank’s Risk Management Committee.
* THE AGE IS OWNED BY FAIRFAX MEDIA LIMITED
* THE RBA CHAIRMAN OF THE REMUNERATION COMMITTEE IS ROGER CORBETT
* ROGER CORBETT IS CHAIRMAN OF FAIRFAX MEDIA LIMITED
Roger Corbett AO
Member since 2 December 2005
Present term ends 1 December 2015
Chairman – Reserve Bank Board Remuneration Committee
Member – Reserve Bank Board Audit Committee
Chairman – Fairfax Media Limited
Chairman – Mayne Pharma Group Limited
Chairman – PrimeAg Australia Limited
Director – Wal-Mart Stores Inc
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT – AND GLENN STEVENS IS IN THE RUNNING
TO BE GUVNOR OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND
Check out this AAP report on The Age online: –
‘Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens has emerged as a dark horse for the top job at the Bank of England.’
‘Mr Stevens is due to front a house parliamentary economics committee in Canberra on Monday over alleged corruption in Note Printing Australia (NPA) and Securency.’
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/business/rba-boss-in-running-for-top-british-job-20121007-277b4.html#ixzz28bnAytXf
RBA UPDATE
GLENN STEVENS AND RIC BATTELLINO COP A BLAST
By MARIS BECK. November 1. 2012.
‘RESERVE Bank officials withheld damning information from a parliamentary committee when they were hauled in to explain the banknote bribery scandal, Federal Parliament has been told.
Liberal MP Tony Smith said in comments attached to a House economics committee report that the bank’s governor, Glenn Stevens, and his former deputy, Ric Battellino, had given a “threadbare” and “less than persuasive … excuse” for their “failure to volunteer pertinent facts”.’
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/rba-officials-withheld-information-20121101-28lvr.html#ixzz2B4Lj1YrK
NOW, THANKS TO THE AGE’S MARIS BECK, WE FIND THAT
VICTORIA POLICE ALSO USED A FOREIGN SPY………..
‘VICTORIA Police used a foreign spy implicated in the Reserve Bank banknote bribery scandal to secure deals exporting its forensic technology to Asia, a court has heard.
The Vietnamese foreign intelligence officer, Colonel Anh Ngoc Luong, was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from Victoria Police contracts between 1998 and 2002.
Colonel Luong, who had an affair with a former Australian trade commissioner, has been accused of arranging bribes on behalf of Reserve Bank note-printing companies.’
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/police-used-spy-in-bribe-scandal-20121110-2956z.html#ixzz2BpT1JJbp
RBA GOVERNOR GLENN STEVENS DENIES HE WAS ZZZZZZZZ AT THE WHEEL!
……………………………………………………….
Another MUST READ by the WALKLEY AWARD WINNING AGE INVESTIGATIVE TEAM of NICK MCKENZIE and RICHARD BAKER: –
RESERVE Bank governor Glenn Stevens has denied that the bank’s handling of Australia’s worst corruption scandal shows it was ”asleep at the wheel” but has conceded – for the second time – it would have been ”prudent” for police to have been told of corruption concerns when they emerged in 2007.
Mr Stevens has also told a parliamentary committee that a failure in governance may have contributed to the alleged bribe paying of two Reserve banknote companies, Note Printing Australia and Securency.
”Clearly, in the end, if these [alleged criminal] matters occurred … it wasn’t good enough. There is no way around that,” Mr Stevens said.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/rba-governor-denies-asleepatwheel-claim-20121130-2ammk.html
AGE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS NICK MCKENZIE AND RICHARD BAKER MAY BE FORCED TO TAKE STAND:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/fairfax-pair-may-be-forced-to-take-stand-20121220-2bojn.html
BAKER AND MCKENZIE WILL TAKE THE STAND.
The Age has lost its appeal to stop two journalists being forced into the witness stand in a bribery case that centres on Reserve Bank banknote subsidiary Securency.
Fairfax Media’s Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie were subpoenaed in December by lawyers defending former banknote executives accused of bribery. The lawyers are seeking to identify the source of the journalists’ December 8 report that an alleged bagman from Indonesia will testify against the accused as a prosecution star witness.
The executives’ defence lawyers were set to begin their final arguments the Monday after the article was published, arguing that there was insufficient evidence for the former banknote executives to be committed to trial and that charges should be dismissed because of misbehaviour of investigators – including the use of the media to create prejudicial publicity.
Lawyers for The Age had argued that there was no forensic purpose in revealing the sources and also that the source was not federal police officers.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/fairfax-pair-must-take-stand-in-bribery-case-court-rules-20130125-2daz0.html#ixzz2Iwl4XP2R
ANOTHER RBA EXEC CHARGED WITH BRIBERY
‘Federal police have charged a ninth former Reserve Bank of Australia banknote executive with foreign bribery offences.
The Melbourne Magistrates Court was told on Thursday that former Note Printing Australia sales manager Steven Wong, 57, has been charged with conspiring to offer a benefit to another person with the intention of influencing a foreign public official in a bid to obtain or retain business with Nepal’s central bank.
Three other former NPA executives already facing charges over a conspiracy to bribe officials in Malaysia and Indonesia were also charged with bribery and false accounting offences related to the Nepal deal.
NPA’s former chief executive John Leckenby, former chief financial officer Peter Hutchinson, and former sales manager Barry Brady are alleged to have created a false invoice for $260,000 in February 2003.
NPA, which is 100 per cent owned by the Reserve Bank, was charged as a corporate entity in 2011 with conspiring to bribe officials in Indonesia and Nepal.’
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/new-charges-in-banknote-bribery-case-20130314-2g3m6.html#ixzz2NXkaOX77