fp: Aussi .. Top bank snared in shady third world deals
THE Reserve Bank has been involved in the payment of multimillion-dollar commissions to shady middle-men in its drive to win banknote printing deals with foreign governments .. A 2007 Vietnam corruption inquiry found the governor's role in the deal was irregular.
No more lies No more lies ... Don Tate, holding his controversial book The War Within, says it's time the truth came out about his platoon in Vietnam. Photo: Adam Rainford
Matthew Benns July 12, 2009
AUSTRALIAN soldiers dragged corpses behind armoured cars in a Vietnam war atrocity that officials have spent 40 years denying ever happened.
Now a request by the Vietnamese Government to locate the bodies of Vietcong soldiers killed in action may finally uncover the truth of what happened in the villages of Thua Thich and Xuyen Moc in May, 1969.
Don Tate, now 60, was a member of the 2nd D and E platoon when the atrocities were committed.
"Mate, this has been a bullshit cover-up for 40 years and it is now finally coming into the open," he said. "They will never find the graves because there aren't any."
It was only after Mr Tate's book, The War Within, was published last year that the phantom 2nd D and E platoon was finally acknowledged as even having existed. Parliamentary secretary for defence support Mike Kelly confirmed in July that the platoon had not been formally raised but had been born in battle.
Mr Tate, from Shellharbour, south of Wollongong, said the phantom force of 39 Diggers ambushed a much larger number of Vietcong in May 1969 in one of the war's biggest platoon-sized battles.
Official reports claimed the bodies of the dead Vietcong were wrapped in green ponchos and buried.
But Mr Tate, who was a private in the platoon, said the bodies were dragged into a crater filled with claymore mines and C4 explosive and given an "engineers' burial" - they were blown up.
"There are no bodies left for them to find," said Mr Tate.
Another five bodies were tied by the ankles to the back of an armoured personnel carrier and dragged to a local village as a warning to Vietcong sympathisers.
In his book Mr Tate wrote: "Eventually the remaining bodies were dumped in the centre of Xuyen Moc, headless. They'd been banging around at the back of the APC till they fell off. God knows where the heads ended up."
Photographs taken at the time show the horrified reaction of villagers as the bodies were dragged behind the APC.
Following Mr Kelly's official acknowledgement last year, the Vietnamese Government approached the Australian embassy in Hanoi and requested help in locating the burial sites of all Vietnamese soldiers killed in action.
The Australian embassy's defence attache, Colonel Stuart Dodds, contacted members of the 2nd D and E Platoon and requested information on the location of the graves.
Mr Tate said the Australian soldiers had been acting under orders. "To cover that atrocity up the military establishment has wiped the official record of 39 Australian Diggers, denying some of them access to war pensions. Finally the truth can come out."
The driver of the APC, Allan Stanton, who was from a different cavalry unit, earlier this year published a book, Before I Forget, that confirmed the accounts of the 2nd D and E Platoon members.
Vietnam veteran, retired Brigadier Neil Weekes, a member of the Prime Minister's Advisory Council on Ex-Service matters, said he was aware of the issue but could only offer a personal view. "I think there seems to be some controversy there and it needs to be resolved at a pretty high level," he said.
Brigadier George Mansford, who was a captain in the Australian Army Training Team which won four Victoria Crosses in Vietnam, advised against looking for the graves. "Some things are best left alone. If what we hear is true then it will certainly be rubbing salt in the wound," he said.
A spokeswoman for the Australian War Memorial said there was no "official view" of the "successful operation" at Thua Thich. "The operational records and veterans' accounts indicate conflicting views over the manner of disposal of enemy bodies," she said.
Sorry, can't give you the other picture in front of me .. one showing "the horrified reaction of villagers" .. nine little Vietnamese children .. one Vietnamese man in a 3 Stooge, by memory, think it was, hat ..
Curly? .. the above certainly is .. the photo you miss is black and white as am guessing the Phantom force atrocities were.
Sex and bribes: RBA exposed RICHARD BAKER AND NICK MCKENZIE May 24, 2010
Securency International, a company half-owned by the RBA, is under investigation by the Federal Police for bribing officials in Asia and Africa.
* Video .. inside .. [others below]
A RESERVE BANK currency firm was willing to supply prostitutes and pay bribes to foreign officials to win banknote supply contracts, according to a federal police witness at the centre of the nation's most serious corruption investigation.
The explosive revelation is one of many made by a key witness in the Australian Federal Police inquiry into the Reserve Bank's polymer currency company, Securency International.
The witness has told an investigation by the Herald's sister newspaper The Age and ABC TV's Four Corners - to be aired tonight - that a middleman hired by Securency to win contracts from foreign governments told him that he intended to bribe a central bank governor from an Asian country. Advertisement: Story continues below
The witness, who was a Securency employee, has given federal police 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".
Of the request to get a prostitute, the witness has revealed that one of the most senior Securency managers told him to arrange an Asian prostitute for a visiting deputy governor of a foreign central bank.
"Next time that 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 police 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 said he did not act on the request, although he believed other employees had arranged prostitutes for central bank officials.
In a 2008 diary entry, the police witness recorded that 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 confirmed last week that the Securency employee turned police witness reported the comment to an Australian ambassador in the country where it was made in 2008, but said it had never been brought specifically to Austrade's attention.
Austrade also emphasised it has never endorsed bribery by Australian businesses.
Securency is a Melbourne polymer bank note company half-owned and supervised by the Reserve Bank. It has employed a network of global agents to help it convince foreign central banks and governments to buy its polymer notes.
A federal police taskforce is investigating Securency for allegedly bribing government officials in countries including Nigeria, Malaysia and Vietnam.
Leading international figures, including the former Malaysian deputy prime minister turned opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim and the Nigerian central bank governor Lamido Sanusi, have urged the Australian government to reveal how far the bribery scandal reaches.
"How could Securency allow … huge bribes in the name of commissions," Mr Ibrahim asked Four Corners. "It's something very difficult for me to comprehend; how is it a system [in Australia], with such a strong institution and respect for good government . . . could allow this.”
Labor and Coalition senators have on three occasions voted against a motion by the Greens leader, Bob Brown, for a parliamentary inquiry into Securency's overseas dealings and the role played by government agencies.
In a 2008 diary excerpt from the witness, a Securency employee is recorded as telling him Securency paid exceptionally high commissions to middlemen to secure a contract in Nigeria. “A range of senior government . . . officials and central bank officials would've been getting a slice of that 20- 25 per cent commission,” the witness said.
The Age has previously revealed that Securency paid millions of dollars into overseas accounts linked to mysterious middlemen who helped the company win deals in Africa and Asia.
In March, the Securency board released a seven-month audit of its dealings with its global network of agents who have received almost $50 million in commission payments since 2003.
The KPMG audit was scathing of Securency management's conduct in appointing, monitoring and paying its agents, several of whom operate in countries seen as the world's most corrupt.
This should be BIG .. the Australian Greens have twice been rebuffed by BOTH major parties in attempts to establish a parliamentary inquiry. The Australian Federal Police were uninterested when first notified.
On the 4 Corners program last night a Nigerian gentlemen said the FACT that Nigerian money had been used by Australians to bribe Nigerians was "despicable". He's right.
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