From Sinofax today:
“Not quite kosher” – that’s how a man who preceded Malcolm Turnbull on the board of a mining company describes how it did business in Russia.
Bill O’Neill was an independent director at Central Mining until 1993, when it secured a stake in a massive Siberian gold mine with the financial backing of the now Australian Prime Minister’s merchant bank, Turnbull & Partners.
Mr O’Neill said the company, which later changed its name to Star Mining, gained a foothold in Russia through bribes and that his fellow director Ian MacNee openly discussed paying-off officials.
“I was a director of the company and he used to talk about how he had to pay out $10 million [as a bribe] to get the whole thing going,” Mr O’Neill told Fairfax Media on Tuesday.
“I just said, ‘it’s not quite kosher’, but it was the only way to do things – it was a pretty wild time in Russia then.”
Mr O’Neill said he left the company’s board after the deal to acquire rights to the Siberian gold mine went through.
Mr Turnbull and his business partner, former NSW premier Neville Wran, were then appointed to the boards of Star Mining and its offshore subsidiary Star Technology. Mr MacNee died in 2008.
There is no suggestion Mr Turnbull knew about any alleged bribes. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s office pointed to comments made in May saying he was not “aware of any payments to political parties or politicians made by Star Mining during or prior to his time as a director”.
Roll out the Supreme Court super injunction and give that man a Companion (AC) in the Order of Bananas!
