Hun Xen and the late Hy LundokThursday, 27 May 2010
David Boyle
The Phnom Penh Post
CAMBODIA has been potentially implicated in an international corruption scandal involving an Australian company accused of procuring prostitutes for foreign officials and offering them bribes in order to secure contracts to print bank-notes, an Australian senator said Tuesday.
Securency – a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia, which has a 50 percent stake in the company – manufactures polymer bank notes that are used in nearly 30 countries.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) is already investigating whether the company’s commissioning agents offered huge bribes to officials in Malaysia, Vietnam, Nigeria and Indonesia.
At a federal senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Senator Bob Brown, leader of the Australian Greens party, indicated that Cambodia could be another country where agents employed by Securency have engaged in bribery.
“In the matter of Securency, government officials have been flagged as being involved in Vietnam, in Indonesia, in Nigeria, potentially in Nepal and South Africa and Cambodia, and a number of other countries,” he said.
At a meeting of the Australian federal senate’s economic reference committee last October, Brown identified Melbourne lawyer Daryl Dealehr as Securency’s commissioning agent in Cambodia.
“Dealehr has ties to the families of Cambodia’s late and notorious national police chief Hok Lundy and Cambodia’s controversial Prime Minister, Hun Sen,” he said.
Dealehr, who could not be reached Wednesday, is the treasurer of the Cambodia Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (CAMEC), and the owner of the mining company Cambodian Resources Ltd.
Neav Chantana, vice governor of the National Bank of Cambodia, said Wednesday she was unaware of any corruption allegations against Securency, and that the bank had no dealings with the company.
AFP said in an emailed statement Tuesday that it would not be appropriate to comment on any potential expansion of its investigation to incorporate Cambodia, explaining it could “jeopardise the integrity of the investigation”.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY NGUON SOVAN
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