ShareI’ve been following the polymer bank note bribery scandal since it broke, so I was thrilled when I read in one of the online publications that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has fired two top executives of Securency International Pty Ltd., the bank note company in the centre of it all, which is co-owned by the RBA. The officials, Myles Curtis, the former Managing Director of Securency, and John Ellery, the former Director of Commercial Services, who were suspended in November 2009, following an onslaught of investigations against them by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) in connection with their role in the bribery scandal, made a final exit from the company Tuesday March 30, 2010. The investigations which were initiated May last year were to find out if there was a breach of Australia’s criminal code, which outlaws payments to foreign officials.  I was happy that at last our own law enforcement agencies would at least take a cue from this and speed up work at this end also. I was greatly mistaken as you shall see shortly.

Meanwhile, let me feed you in with details of the scandal. Securency, the bank note company was being investigated by its home government for paying bribes to top Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) officials amounting to nearly N1b (one billion Naira) in a polymer bank note bribery scandal that also involved deals with other countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America; Nigeria (giant of Africa that it is) turned out to be its biggest contract in Africa.

In a media statement Tuesday, the RBA said the decision to sack the two executives was taken after an audit report prepared from a seven-month long investigation by a private company, KPMG Forensics, showed impropriety on the part of Securency’s officials, especially as concerns dealings in foreign territory. The report stated that the company had made a total payment of about $50 million in non-commission and commission expenses to agents in foreign territories believed to have been used as bribes to gain access into the market in these areas and promote the sale of their copyrighted plastic bank notes.

The Nigerian negotiations, as a result of which a contract was awarded to Securency by the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Plc, based on instructions from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) were handled by the company’s Africa Manager, Peter Chapman, who has since resigned, as a result of the scandal.  By virtue of his position, Mr Chapman directed the movement of millions of dollars in commissions to bank accounts in offshore tax havens and other locations as the company tried to win contracts from central banks around the continent to print polymer notes. The Nigerian deal led to the purchase from Securency, of at least 1.9 billion pieces of polymer substrates on which bank notes were printed. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had, under its former governor, Chukwuma Soludo, led the reforms that brought about the adoption of polymer notes for all of Nigeria’s lower denomination bank notes.

As I researched this topic and came across the initial casualties of the investigations and the way they hid their tails between their legs in shame, I wondered when we would ever get to that level. Would a Nigerian official have resigned like Peter Chapman did as a result of such impropriety? Impro..wetin? For where? He would have pointed accusing fingers at his enemies who were bent on doing him in! And our law enforcement agencies are not helping issues (sometimes I ask myself why I write as if I lived on another planet). No be de same Nigerian factor dey affect everybody including the law enforcement agencies; (and as recently revealed, this fourth estate of the realm that I so proudly belong to)? Anyway, while the Australian Federal Police took the bull by the horns not caring how highly politically connected (locally and internationally) the major players were the Nigerian law enforcement agencies are yet to reveal to the public who the Nigerian beneficiaries were.

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