Separate country trials for 14 Securency accused

Some perspective and planning is possible following an under-reported ruling of Justice Jane Hollingworth in the Supreme Court of Victoria last month that surveyed the trials and tribulations of the Securency and Note Printing Australia affair.

Fourteen people await trial on matters relating to financial flows from Securency - at the time a business under the wing of the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Note Printing, Securency, and a number of their former employees or agents, have been charged with various offences, including conspiring to bribe foreign officials. Some of them have also been charged with false accounting in relation to payments made in connection with foreign agents.

The offences are alleged to have occurred in order to secure banknote printing contracts with central banks in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Nepal, at various dates between late 1999 and early 2004.

The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions began proceedings in late 2013 and over the first half of 2014. In some cases, the accused had been committed to stand trial for the relevant charges. In other cases, the CDPP exercised his power to directly indict, after the accused had been discharged by the magistrate at committal.

The committal proceedings ran for 112 sitting days, over a period of more than two years.

The AFP disclosure material contains more than 80 million documents. The prosecution briefs for the committal hearings comprised more than 80 lever arch folders of documents, which had been extracted from the AFP disclosure material.

Little of this material may enter the public domain any time soon, one reason being the complexity of preparing the trials.

Wrangles over quarantining sensitive information also impeded the case but, as reported above, this squabble is over for now.

Hollingworth spelled out the original rationale for a mammoth series of suppression orders made in mid-2014.

On 13 June 2014, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave notice to the court and the parties that it intended to apply for a proceeding suppression order, preventing publication of information that suggested or alleged that particular persons had engaged in certain bribery-related activities.

The DFAT notice said that the purpose of the proposed order was "to prevent damage to Australia's international relations that may be caused by the publication of material that may damage the reputation of specified individuals who are not the subject of charges in these proceedings."

The notice said that DFAT would be relying upon a supporting affidavit, parts of which may be confidential. None of 90 notified media outlets contested this at the time, though Fairfax did later.

In her recent June ruling Hollingworth wrote that: "the DFAT order listed 14 specific individuals, being persons who were highly influential in the governments of Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, or their close relatives, and three political offices ('the named persons').

"None of the named persons is a person whom the accused are alleged to have conspired to bribe; the prosecution case against the current accused is that they conspired to bribe foreign bank officials, not foreign politicians.

"Nor have any of the named persons been charged, in Australia or overseas, in relation to any of the allegations made in these proceedings.

"In so far as any of the named persons is mentioned in these cases in the context of any bribery allegation, the truth or falsity of those allegations will not be tested in these proceedings."

Hollingworth wrote that DFAT held, and still holds, concern "that the publication of the suppressed information, in relation to the named persons, would offend or embarrass them in circumstances that may have adverse consequences for Australia.

"Those adverse consequences include putting at risk co-operation between the Australian government and the governments of Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, in areas of defence, security, counter-terrorism, transnational crime, and law enforcement (including extradition and mutual assistance requests)."

The judge wrote that: "the redacted parts of the Bird affidavit gave specific examples of Australia's interests having been harmed in the past, when bilateral relations had been damaged.

"The affidavit also contained details of some specific current situations in which the interests of the Australian government and its citizens could be harmed, if the named persons withdrew co-operation because the Australian government had not done enough to protect them from highly critical, yet untested, allegations that may be made in an Australian court."

She concluded she was  "satisfied on the evidence before me that the risks of harm identified in the Bird affidavit were real and substantial."

Open justice may yet prevail.

"There has already been considerable reporting about the foreign bribery allegations involving the RBA subsidiaries - prior to, during, and since, the committal proceedings," Hollingworth wrote.

"The DFAT order does not prevent the media from reporting on the existence or nature of the current proceedings in this court. The overwhelming majority of the evidence which may be given at any future trial of these proceedings would be able to be reported freely.

"In particular, the evidence against the current accused (which is at the core of what would be tested in these cases) would be able to be reported without restriction.

"The Australian public would be able to be fully informed during the course of any trial as to what it is that the RBA subsidiaries, and their former officers and employees, are alleged to have done."

While now no longer relevant, Hollingworth emphasised: "The DFAT order does not inhibit (or attempt to inhibit) any of that reporting."