Aust. Reserve Bank sales chief axed as office is raided

11 Oct 2010

Source  The Age
The Reserve Bank has demoted its chief polymer banknote salesman and banned the practice of paying overseas middlemen to win contracts, in response to the growing bribery scandal involving Securency, the RBA subsidiary that makes banknotes. Securency's director of global sales, Hugh Brown, whose office was among those searched by British authorities yesterday as part of a series of global raids co-ordinated by the Australian Federal Police, has been dropped from the sales team and moved elsewhere in the company.

Mr Brown, who is believed to be a person of interest to Britain's Serious Fraud Office, has intricate knowledge of many of Securency's overseas deals that are now under scrutiny as part of the joint AFP-SFO international corruption probe.
The AFP is investigating allegations that bribes were paid by Securency's overseas agents, or middlemen, in order to win banknote contracts from countries in Africa, Asia and South America. In a further development, The Age believes that the RBA recently permanently banned the practice of hiring overseas agents, or middlemen, after earlier suspending their use by Securency. For more than a decade, the RBA allowed Securency to pay middlemen tens of millions of dollars in commissions, despite the practice being extremely corruption-prone.

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