Reserve Bank subsidiary, Note Printing Australia, has recouped more than A$1 million in legal expenses from four former employees who were charged but never convicted over their alleged involvement in a bribery conspiracy to secure banknote contracts in Asia and Africa.
In October 2011, Note Printing Australia and another RBA-owned company known as Securency, pleaded guilty to three charges of conspiracy to commit foreign bribery.
Securency was sentenced to fines totalling $480,000 for offences that occurred in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, while NPA was fined $450,000 for offences in Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal.
Securency and NPA also paid a combined total of $21,666,482 in pecuniary penalty orders.
The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions also secured convictions against four former Securency employees including the former chief executive, Myles Curtis.
However, the CDPP was unable to pursue the prosecutions against four accused persons whose trials were permanently stayed following unlawful examinations conducted by the Australian Crime Commission.
The decision to permanently stay the trials of the four NPA employees was overturned by the Victorian Court of Appeal in May 2017 but reinstated by the High Court in November 2018.
The High Court decision exhausted the CDPP’s legal avenues for appeal, which means the proceedings have now been conclusively determined with no findings of guilt.
A costs order for $1,125,000 was made by the Supreme Court of Victoria in September 2019 in favour of the former employees to recover some of their legal expenses from the CDPP.
In its latest annual accounts lodged with ASIC, NPA reveals that the former employees agreed to transfer the money to their former employer.
“The limit of the applicable insurance policy was reached some time ago in respect of the legal costs associated with the above charges,” NPA states in its accounts.
“Advances, in accordance with individual deeds, were made by NPA to the former employees for legal costs.
“The full amount of the September 2019 costs order, $1,125,000, was paid to NPAduring this financial year (by agreement of each of the former employees and the relevant insurer) as repayment of the majority of the advances made.”
NPA’s directors state in the accounts that they do not expect the former employees to incur any “further material legal costs”.