The Greens want Glenn Stevens to appear
before a Senate committee.
The Greens are calling for the Reserve Bank governor to appear before a Senate committee to answer bribery allegations made against a company half-owned by the RBA.
Tonight's Four Corners program airs the corruption allegations against Securency, a company set up to sell Australia's polymer banknote technology.
Greens Leader Bob Brown says he has asked the Senate economics committee to call on RBA governor Glenn Stevens to appear before a hearing next week.
"These are extraordinarily serious allegations on the front page of Australian newspapers yet again," Mr Brown said.
"Parliament cannot simply put its hand out and say the Reserve Bank and its subsidiaries are beyond parliamentary scrutiny."
The allegations are made by a former Securency employee turned federal police witness who has said the firm was willing to supply prostitutes and pay bribes to foreign officials to win banknote supply contracts.
The witness has told the investigation by Nick McKenzie for The Age and Four Corners that a middleman hired by Securency to win contracts from foreign governments told him he intended to bribe a central bank governor from an Asian country.
The witness has given investigators his diary in which he recorded the middleman telling him in 2007 that the "governor would be very happy if the commission [payment] was increased".
Regarding the request to get a prostitute, the witness has revealed one of the most senior Securency managers told him to arrange an Asian prostitute for a deputy governor of a foreign central bank.
"Next time this official was in town, [I was told] that I was to procure him a bodyguard and with raised eyebrows and a wink ... a particular type of bodyguard being an Asian woman," the witness told Four Corners.
"He was suggesting I might like to procure a prostitute for one of the central bank officials on his visit to Melbourne."
The witness says he did not act on the request although he believed other employees had arranged prostitutes for officials.
In a 2008 diary entry, the witness recorded a consultant employed in Asia by Australia's overseas trade agency Austrade told him that to win contracts Securency needed to hire someone to bribe officials or "to pass white envelopes for you".
Austrade this week confirmed the Securency employee did report the comment to an Australian ambassador in the Asian country where it was made in 2008, but says it had never been brought specifically to Austrade's attention.
Austrade also stressed it has never endorsed bribery by Australian businesses.
No comments:
Post a Comment