23may09_SBA_A01

Souths v Eels: Another last-minute thriller
Peter Hartcher: Batts in Turnbull’s belfry News Review
MAY 18 - MAY 24
‘I’VE NEVER
BEEN CAST
FOR BEAUTY’
Sacha Horler, Spectrum
MAY 23-24, 2009
Good Weekend
WEEKEND EDITION
No. 53,555 First published 1831
EXCLUSIVE
Top bank
snared in
shady third
world deals
Richard Baker
and Nick McKenzie
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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.
Securency, a Melbourne-based
banknote supplier half-owned by the
Reserve Bank, has made a substantial
number of ‘‘commission’’ payments
to agents, including those previously
implicated in corruption scandals.
The company, which has supplied
polymer material to print money in
Australia and 26 other countries, is
chaired by the bank’s assistant
governor, Robert Rankin. Its board features another two Reserve Bank appointees, as well as executives from a
British firm, Innovia Films, the owner
of the other half of Securency.
Some of Securency’s agents are
closely tied to officials in countries
ranked by Transparency International
as highly corrupt.
Several agents have been named in
official corruption investigations in
‘‘If this is happening, then it is
against all the policies and
procedures the RBA has put
in place for this
organisation.’’
RIC BATTELLINO,
Reserve Bank
deputy
governor
Africa and Asia. At least one has a
criminal conviction for fraud.
Company insiders have raised concerns that the company’s practices
have left it exposed to allegations that
some commissions could be used to
pay kickbacks to foreign officials.
The Reserve Bank’s Deputy
Governor, Ric Battellino, said yesterday that he would demand an immediate response from Securency about its
use of agents and payments to them.
‘‘If this is happening, then it is
against all the policies and procedures
the RBA has put in place for this organisation,’’ he said.
It can be revealed Securency has:
䡺 Made payments to a London firm,
Contec Global, which was accused in
an official Ugandan inquiry of having a
corrupt relationship with a Ugandan
minister found to be ‘‘fronting and lobbying’’ for the company.
䡺 Been linked with a controversial
South African casino tycoon, Vivian
Reddy, who was embroiled in the recently aborted corruption trial involving his friend, the President, Jacob
Zuma. Reddy denies the allegations.
䡺 Made payments to companies
linked to a South African businessman,
Don McArthur, who last year was con-
victed for fraud. McArthur denied any
link to Securency.
䡺 Paid million of dollars in commissions to a Vietnamese company,
CFTD, whose subsidiary, Banktech
was managed by the Vietnamese central bank governor’s son at the time the
bank decided to switch to polymer
notes in 2002. A 2007 Vietnam corruption inquiry found the governor’s role
in the deal was irregular.
A company insider also claims he
was told that Securency had provided
$US100,000 – subsequently donated to
an Indian political party in 2007 – while
it was seeking a trial of polymer notes.
It is claimed the payment was recorded
in accounts as ‘‘marketing expenses’’.
In a statement yesterday, Securency
said it conducted a thorough due diligence process when appointing
agents, which included checks by the
Federal Government agency Austrade
and compliance with international
anti-corruption conventions.
Securency said its agents – whose
identities are disclosed to the Reserve
Bank representatives on its board —
had signed agreements forbidding
payments to foreign officials and
politicians.
In its statement, Securency acknowledged it had cut ties with agents
on a ‘‘number of occasions’’ when it
was not satisfied with performance.
Securency denies any payment to
Indian political parties or politicians.
In contrast to Securency, an associated company, Note Printing Australia
– which is fully owned by the Reserve
Bank – said it no longer used agents
because it was ‘‘more responsible’’ to
deal directly with central banks.
Another Securency agent operating
in Asia is a Melbourne barrister, Daryl
Dealehr, who has ties to the family of
Cambodia’s late police chief Hok
Lundy and the Prime Minister, Hun
Sen. Securency has yet to win any contracts in Cambodia and Mr Dealehr has
not been named in any corruption or
criminal inquiries.
The revelation of Securency’s payments to agents in developing
countries has the potential to embarrass the Government and the Reserve
Bank, especially so soon after the Iraqi
kickbacks scandal involving AWB.
Mr Battellino said the bank was
aware Securency operated in countries
with ‘‘bad reputations’’ but was ‘‘conscious to ensure arrangements were in
place to avoid corruption payments’’.
There is no suggesting Securency
has engaged in bribery but its operations with agents in corruption-prone
countries raise concerns about its risk
management procedures.
Company insiders claim Securency
offers agents commissions of between
10 and 20 per cent of any deal they help
win. The industry standard is from 2 to
6 per cent.
Securency said commission payments varied between its agents, and
advice from Austrade was sought to
determine appropriate commissions
for each country it operated in.
HARD
SELL
SKIPPY
IN THEIR
SIGHTS
smh.com.au $2.40 (inc GST)
His brother is one of our most celebrated judges,
but Mark Spigelman has an even more extraordinary
tale. He survived the Nazis by dressing as a girl.
HOW THIS
MAN MADE
MILLIONS OUT
OF ‘LONGER
LASTING’ SEX
Kate McClymont
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Family ties ... Mark Spigelman disguised as a little girl, with his grandfather and
cousin, who both died in Auschwitz soon after this photo was taken; (right) Mark
Spigelman and his brothers, Allan and Jim Spigelman.
Geesche Jacobsen
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MARK SPIGELMAN thought he had a
normal childhood, even though he did
not play with other children and was
told not to talk, cry or pee in public. He
was also dressed as a girl and hidden in
a rat-infested hole or a wardrobe.
As a Jewish boy born in Poland in
late 1940, his life was in permanent
danger. Dressed as a girl, the blueeyed boy was safer because no one
would pull down his pants to check if
he was circumcised.
Nearly 69 years later Professor
Spigelman thinks he is a normal adult.
But his memories cause nightmares
and he checks for another exit
whenever he enters a strange room.
He knows his experiences during
the Holocaust have shaped him. At
the end of the war he was ‘‘pretty
streetwise but socially . . . quite
backward’’. As a child survivor he had
a ‘‘double problem’’– he was raised
by parents who were also survivors.
The family migrated to Australia in
1949. His brothers Jim, the NSW Chief
Justice, and Allan, a professor of
surgery, were born after the war but
also live with the legacy.
‘‘Some children of survivors feel a
responsibility to those that didn’t
survive to actually do something with
your own life that in some way
justifies the survival of my parents,’’
Professor Allan Spigelman says.
Mark and his parents survived by
pretending to be German. They
escaped deportation to Auschwitz
when a German officer found that
Mark reminded him of his daughter.
Later Mark was smuggled into a
ghetto where children were banned.
Afterwards they hid at a garbage
dump, and with a Polish family.
Their home town had a population
of 60,000 Jews before the German
invasion. Mark was one of only three
children who survived. His father,
Miloch, was one of 15 survivors among
72 Spigelman relatives.
Mark and Allan Spigelman, 56,
attribute three major characteristics of
their life to the Holocaust experience:
their close-knit family, a drive to
achieve, and need to help others.
Now a professor of paleoepidemiology, Mark Spigelman was
encouraged to study medicine –
which he later combined with
archaeology – because doctors
survived longer in the camps.
‘‘We were certainly prepared to
make sure if anything like that
happened again we would have the
best chance of surviving,’’ he says.
Jim Spigelman, 63, one of the
organisers of the Freedom Rides,
says: ‘‘I have an intolerance for
intolerance – that must come from
that [the family’s history].’’
Mark Spigelman was slow to
acknowledge his experience until he
realised ‘‘ I have almost a duty to do
something’’.
His story appears in a new book The
Words To Remember It, along with
stories of other Australian child
survivors of the Holocaust. It will be
launched tomorrow by Chief Justice
Spigelman, who says one of its lessons
is the resilience of people who see
themselves as survivors, not victims.
Wedgies and petty theft tie up consular staff
Tim Elliott
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TOUCHING up a Singapore Airlines
flight attendant, giving drinkers
‘‘wedgies’’ at Oktoberfest and pilfering
bar mats from Phuket bars. Australians
love to travel and are, it seems, finding
ever more unorthodox ways of extending time overseas – even if it means
bunking down in the lock-up.
‘‘Australians go everywhere, and
everywhere they go they get into
trouble,’’ a senior official from the
Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade says. ‘‘It makes you proud.’’
The department’s consular division
in Canberra has 55 staff, and half of
them work full-time on the 1500 cases
of Australians in strife overseas. Some
involve death, missing persons and
medical evacuations, but many are of
the Annice Smoel ‘‘bar mat bandit’’
variety, trivial incidents that account
for a large slab of consular resources.
‘‘Touching up cabin crew is quite
common,’’ the official says. ‘‘On
Singapore Airlines, for instance, even
grabbing a stewardess by the wrist can
get you an ‘outrage of modesty’
The UN-HARD way
to save on car insurance.
charge, which we see a bit. And Australians, usually women, can’t seem to
keep their fingers off stuff when they
are transiting through airports, either.
We had a woman caught stealing
toiletries in Bangkok Airport last year.’’
Men, on the other hand, are better
at ‘‘offensive behaviour like pissing in
pot plants and crashing jet-skis’’.
Midair meltdowns are also common. Terrance George, 57, of Melbourne, hit the headlines last week for
lashing out at flight attendants who
tried to move him from his seat on a
Qantas flight to London. The navy officer had reportedly been making unwanted advances to a fellow passenger.
‘‘Often alcohol is the catalyst,’’ the
source says. ‘‘Two years ago we had
three young Australian men who went
round at Oktoberfest giving people
‘huggy wedgies’, where you walk up,
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hug a person and yank up their underwear. They thought it was hilarious but
they were arrested and we had to help
them get legal advice.’’
A Sydney barrister, Ben Clark, says
offences that are regarded as innocuous by most Australians can be serious
overseas. In February he represented
two Sydney men who were jailed for
two days in Phuket and ordered to pay
$1000 compensation for stealing a
50-cent picture from a street vendor.
In Thailand, says Mr Clark, ‘‘penalties for crimes committed at night are
far more severe than if the same crime
were committed during the day’’.
And the Land of Smiles is a clear
favourite with Australian travellers.
‘‘Our embassy in Bangkok gets by far
the largest volume of Australians behaving badly of anywhere in world,’’
the official says.
IMPOTENCE entrepreneur
Jack Vaisman, famous for
his provocative billboards
promising longer-lasting
sex and his tantalising
‘‘nasal delivery technique’’
is a hard man to pin down.
Official documents
show he was born in a
range of places on
different dates. And
despite preferring the
title ‘‘Doctor’’ he is not a
registered medical
practitioner in Australia.
Authorities have been
equally confused by his
inflated claims about
erectile dysfunction
treatments.
But repeated findings
that Mr Vaisman’s
companies have engaged
in misleading or deceptive
behaviour have never
been enough to keep the
good man down.
Far from it. The longlasting Mr Vaisman has
set his sights on
Australian women. He
claims 60 per cent of
them are in need of a cure
for a low-libido problem
they didn’t know they had.
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Full Reports – News, Page 2;
News Review, Page 3
SYDNEY CITY showers easing 16°- 20°
LIVERPOOL showers easing 14°- 20°
PENRITH showers easing 14°- 20°
NEWCASTLE showers 15°- 21°
DUBBO fine 13°- 20°
ARMIDALE showers 9°- 14°
WOLLONGONG showers 17°- 20°
CANBERRA early showers 10°- 14°
DETAILS NEWS REVIEW PAGE 15
ISSN 0312-6315
9 770312 631063
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