AUSTRALIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Tobin Meagher, David Benson, Tessa Trend and William Stefanidis, Clayton Utz
of individuals, rather than companies. While this trend is expected to continue, companies will also continue to be prosecuted in appropriate cases. Frequently, associated false account - ing charges have been brought in parallel to the bribery prosecutions, against individuals who sought to disguise or conceal the true nature of the bribes. As of 9 October 2024, the NACC had six matters before the court, with a further 31 preliminary investigations and 29 corruption investigations underway, and 465 matters pending assess - ment. While it is difficult to obtain reliable data on the ongoing bribery and corruption investigations in Australia, the most notable Australian enforce - ment actions in the anti-bribery and corruption space include the following. • In 2011, in what were the first foreign brib - ery prosecutions in Australia, the AFP charged Securency International Pty Limited (“Securency”), Note Printing Australia Limited (NPA) and several former senior managers with the offences of bribery of foreign public officials, conspiracy to commit foreign bribery and false accounting offences connected with that conduct. The cases arose from allega - tions by a company insider that Securency had paid nearly AUD50 million to international sales agents to bribe central banking officials in Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam in order to secure banknote supply contracts. A series of hearings was run from 2011 to 2018, fol - lowing which: (a) each company pleaded guilty to three charges of conspiracy to commit foreign bribery, were fined AUD480,000 and AUD450,000 respectively, and were sepa - rately the subject of pecuniary penalty
orders under POCA amounting to AUD22 million; (b) convictions were obtained against various former employees of Securency, including the CEO, CFO, a senior busi - ness development manager, the Indone - sian sales agent and a former banknote specialist; and (c) charges against four other individuals were permanently stayed on the grounds that their continued prosecution would bring the administration of justice into disrepute, after the investigation into their conduct was tainted by unlawful compul - sory examinations, to their prejudice. • In 2015, the AFP charged two directors of an Australian construction company, Lifese, and a third individual, with conspiracy to bribe a foreign public official in connection with build - ing contracts in Iraq. The three men pleaded guilty, with the directors each ultimately sen - tenced to just over three years’ imprisonment and fined AUD250,000, with the third man sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. • In a series of cases running between 2012 and 2017, ASIC successfully prosecuted a number of former officers and directors of AWB Ltd, Australia’s largest wheat exporter (at the time), for their involvement in a scheme between 1999 and 2003 by which AWB Ltd rorted the UN’s Oil-for-Food Programme in Iraq. Civil penalties and disqualification orders were imposed on, amongst others, the board’s chair and the managing director on the basis that the former had failed to make adequate enquiries into the lawfulness of the scheme, despite the existence of certain red flags, and the latter had failed to inform the board of certain matters, in breach of their duties to the company. • In May 2018, engineering consultancy Sinclair Knight Merz, now Jacobs Group Australia
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