Via Banking Day legend, Ian Rogers:
Two RBA companies are finally exposed as guilty – convicted way back in 2011 – for their role in a conspiracy to bribe foreign officials. The Supreme Court of Victoria lifted a raft of non-publication orders on these matters yesterday.
Common knowledge to some readers (or at last those that are most connected), the details of the catalogue of convictions and the identity of all perpetrators and their sentences has not been canvassed in national media until today.
Myles Curtis, the CEO of one of these RBA companies, Securency International, has also been convicted (in late 2017) of one charge of conspiring with his employer and others to offer to bribe a foreign public official in order to obtain or retain business in Indonesia and Malaysia, and one charge of false accounting.
John Leckenby, the CEO of the other of these companies, Note Printing Australia, was one of four defendants whose criminal trials were permanently stayed earlier this month by the High Court of Australia.
Philip Lowe, the present governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, had the task yesterday of issuing the statement of contrition that his predecessor, Glenn Stevens, was not able to publish.
The offences were committed over the period from December 1999 to September 2004, Lowe explained.
“The boards of NPA and Securency decided to enter guilty pleas at the earliest possible time rather than to defend the charges, reflecting an acceptance of responsibility and genuine remorse.
“The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions acknowledged the very high degree of cooperation and assistance the companies provided to the police. The DPP also accepted that the boards of the two companies had no involvement in, or knowledge of, the conduct in question.
“No evidence of knowledge or involvement by officers of the RBA, or the non-executive members of either board appointed by the RBA, has emerged in any of the relevant legal proceedings or otherwise.”
Or, as Justice Jane Hollingworth put it in her sentencing remarks in 2012, these were “serious examples of the offence [of bribery]” by the Reserve Bank’s associated companies.
“The conduct was deliberate, sophisticated, carefully orchestrated and concealed.
“The conspiracies lasted for substantial periods of time: the Indonesian conspiracy for just over one year; the others for more than two years each; and similar conduct took place in more than one country.”
Lowe also said: “the RBA accepts there were shortcomings in its oversight of these companies.”
Curtis, one of the leaders of the overall mischief as head of Securency, copped a suspended sentence of two years and six months.
Radius Christanto, a “middleman” in Indonesia also received a suspended sentence of two years and six months.
David Ellery, the chief financial officer and company secretary of Securency received a suspended sentence of six months on single count of false accounting.
Clifford Gerathy, a former sales director of Securency, received a suspended sentence of three months.
Christian Boillot, a former senior sales executive from Note Printing Australia, on Wednesday entered a please of guilty to a charge of conspiracy. He will be sentenced next month.
Four of Boillot’s NPA colleagues will not face a criminal trial after the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Crime Commission spectacularly messed up their investigation of the offences.
Earlier this month the High Court found the four faced “forensic disadvantage and [that the] consequent prejudice to the fair trials of the appellants were incurable.”
These four are Barry Brady, Peter Sinclair Hutchinson, Steven Wong and their CEO at Note Printing Australia, John Leckenby.
If you ask me the RBA and its mates in the government should also be in court for delivering the super-injunction that prevented the press from covering the proceedings of the most heinous crimes by any central bank operations in history, anywhere.
But you see the problem.
