Via The Age and the great work of Richard Baker and Nick Mckenzie:
The night before the May 2009 story came out, then deputy governor of the Reserve Bank, Ric Battelino, rang The Age’s investigative team. “You’re not going to publish this are you?” a worked-up Battelino asked.
…But even when the story was public it was hard to get any traction. For the most part, the rest of Australia’s media was uninterested and did no reporting of their own. Kevin Rudd’s Labor government, so keen while in opposition to hammer the Coalition over the Australian Wheat Board kickbacks scandal, did nothing and said nothing on the RBA controversy, or the involvement of other government agencies. Former federal Labor MP Kelvin Thomson was a notable exception.
One of the few times the scandal made the top of online news charts was when The Age and Herald reported on a Securency plan to treat a visiting central bank official to a prostitute. The newspaper banner “RBA firm hooker sex bribe” proved irresistible.
Another time was when reporters Baker and McKenzie were ordered by a Victorian court in 2012 to reveal their sources or face jail for contempt. Thankfully, this situation was avoided.
When the AFP, which had assembled a serious and motivated taskforce, made history in mid-2011 by charging the RBA firms and a host of executives with bribery, there was a brief spurt of media and political attention.
By the end of 2011, however, the noise was forcefully quieted by of a series of suppression orders imposed by the Victorian courts at the request of the accused’s lawyers and, in one infamous example, the Australian government in order to avoid damaging international relations.
Not even the existence of the orders was allowed to be reported.
And so the protected public oligarchs walked away.
Much more at the piece. A must read to understand how deep runs the corruption in Australian monetary circles.
