International raids were launched in several countries last night in connection with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) bribery and corruption scandal that has also implicated a Malaysian corporate figure of receiving a RM11.3 million. The operations were to uncover evidence of corruption and bribery involving RBA subsidiaries banknote firms Securency International and Note Printing Australia (NPA). Securency is a joint venture between the Australia central bank and Innovia Films, which helps design and produce plastic-style polymer banknotes known for their durability and for being hard to counterfeit.
Yesterday, two men were arrested in raids by Australian, British and Spanish police. British and Australian police said they carried out 15 coordinated swoops on Wednesday, with another two in Spain. Two men were arrested in Britain and are being questioned. The Age investigative reporters Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie said six houses across Melbourne were raided. This involved several middlemen who helped Securency win a multi-million ringgit deal with Nigeria's central bank live in or near London, while the firm's global director of sales lives in Hampshire. The Age reported the raids would put fresh pressure on the Australian government to back a broader inquiry into Securency's dealings and the extent to which they involve failings by the RBA and agencies such as Austrade, which helped select some of the middlemen.
The AFP operation began in May 2009 after The Age revealed Securency had wired millions of dollars to offshore accounts linked to dubious middlemen, including some previously implicated in corrupt dealings. Early this year, an audit discovered more than RM150 million had been paid between 2003 and 2009 to overseas middlemen.
Malaysian Anti Corruption Commission (MACC) has been helping the AFP trace the RM11.3 million that was paid by Securency International, a polymer currency company, to its Malaysian agent. Securency and NPA engaged the Malaysian agent, against advice, in the late 1990s. The Australian companies won currency printing contracts in Malaysia for the RM50 Commonwealth Games commemorative note in 1998 and the RM5 polymer note in 2004. The Malaysian was chairman of several local companies but probably remembered for the problems that besieged the listing of a fast rising company in 1996. He had reportedly also been a broker for a Pakistani government-linked weapons-making factory and was the second arms trader to have been used as an agent by either or both Securency and NPA. Securency had also used an arms dealer suspected of supplying guns to Latin American drug gangs as its agent in Paraguay.
Source: The Malay Mail, AFP
