RBA spills the beans about bribery case

THE Reserve Bank has broken its long silence over the Securency and Note Printing Australia bribery scandal, confirming its subsidiaries bribed foreign officials over banknote contracts.

The suppression order covering guilty pleas made in 2011 was lifted yesterday.

It has now been revealed Note Printing Australia paid a $ 450,000 fine and a penalty of $ 1.86 million. Securency paid fines of $ 480,000 and a penalty of $ 19.8 million.

Securency and Note Printing Australia, note- printing companies that were respectively half- owned and fullyowned by the RBA, committed the offences from 1999 to 2004.

Four former employees of Note Printing Australia pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe or false accounting.

The charges, however, were permanently stayed on the basis that pursuing them would “bring the administration of justice into disrepute”.

The Australian Federal Police charged Note Printing Australia and Securency and seven former staff after a twoyear investigation in co- operation with foreign agencies.

They were charged over alleged bribes to officials in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam from 1999 to 2005.

“The RBA accepts there were shortcomings in its oversight of these companies, and changes to controls and governance have been made to ensure that a situation like this cannot happen again,” said RBA governor Philip Lowe.