Article: Fraudulent Banking in Australia Offers a Peek at Global Bank Fraud

Over the past 20 years, Australians have endured a long crucifixion by the banks, the Parliament, the courts, and the government departments that provides a glimpse of the corruption that underlies most, if not all, parts of the New World Financial Order mentioned recently by Russian President Medvedev. Today it's time to resurrect the evidence that was buried by the banks, disappeared in Parliament, blocked by the courts, and rejected unread by the bureaucracy. There is no statute of limitation for fraud and the issue is NOT dead. It was not just the Labour governments under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating who caused "the recession we had to have." In Bank Fraud and John Howard Professor Evan Jones writes that,

In the early 1980s, John Howard was Federal Treasurer under the Fraser Coalition Government. Howard had initiated the Campbell Inquiry into the financial sector and its 1981 Report recommended comprehensive deregulation of the sector.

After several years in which Australians suffered the devaluation of their currency and fraudulent Foreign Currency Loans under Labour, the Liberals won control of Parliament in Canberra. The Liberal Government was led by John Howard who had been a stalwart promoter of the foreign currency loans which had caused much of the problem. The collusion between the banks, the Parliament, the courts and government departments has continued unabated, unchallenged by the mainstream media. For those Commonwealth officials, failure to report evidence of a felony is misprision of felony and those who are in a position to know of a felony and fail to report it become an accessory to the crime.

Australians are lucky to have people of courage--among them: Clive Alexander, Gerhard Moser, Agnes Wong, John McLennan, John Salmon and others. These principled people were witnesses to the corruption in the banks and they blew the whistle on the law-breakers. They leaked damning internal documents that were described by Francis Galbally, the head of a prominent law firm, as "the most potent I have seen in fifty years in criminal law." Australians are lucky to have had a senator in Canberra who had the courage to table these documents before the Parliament. For four years Senator Paul McLean fought corruption by the banks and politicians in Canberra. He tabled the infamous WestPac Letters and the "devastating attachments" in his appearance before the corrupt Martin Inquiry. Days later, Steven Martin, the head of that committee, told economists in Melbourne that "McLean's allegations are outrageous and he has provided no evidence."

Paul McLean personally confronted Steven Martin about this shameless lie. Martin admitted to McLean that neither he nor any member of his committee had yet looked at any of the 3,000 pages of evidence that had been provided. That was in March 1991. A year later the committee refused to release any of the material tabled by McLean. But that evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the banks is still available and is being made public again.

McLean called for his resignation but soon Keating promoted Martin to the office of Speaker of the House.

These documents were sent to Prime Minister Hawke, Treasurer Keating, Attorney General Duffy, Opposition Leader John Hewson, and all senators. After a historic confrontation with the President of the Senate, Kerry Sibra, McLean had tabled the WestPac Letters with the "devastating attachments" in the Senate making them property of the Senate and therefore of the Australian government.

Hewson had his chief of staff, Duncan Fairweather send a letter to McLean saying, "This material has not been requested by Dr. Hewson and I return it to you unopened." In fact the material had been opened and clumsily resealed with tape.

Senator McLean had not sought the letters either, but responded to the responsibility to do his duty as a federal Senator.

The Attorney General advised that the "devastating attachments" to the WestPac Letters had not been sought or examined by his department. Knowing that the evidence existed but refusing to seek or examine it was misprision of a felony and the Attorney General became an accessory to the criminal fraud of the bank.

The Martin Committee had referred the WestPac Letters without the "devastating attachments" to the National Crime Authority. Lacking the evidence, the NCA found no relevant criminal activity and no subsequent inquiries were taken. Similarly, the Director of Public Prosecution avoided the evidence in stating that no offense against the Commonwealth had been found.

The Attorney General's office referred the WestPac Letters without the "devastating attachments" to the Australian Federal Police so the AFP could see not evil, either. The AG's office then sent the WestPac Letters to the New South Wales Police Service and the Victorian Police.. without the "devastating attachments." The claim had been made that the "devastating attachments" to the WestPac Letters had never come into the possession of the government. But, of course, they had. The Martin Inquiry had made sure they would not see the light of day.

In 1993, Senator McLean wrote to Bernie Fraser, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia,

The license to be a Banker carries with it profound obligations. No others hold such power. This trust has more than once been abused in Australia recently.

I therefore on behalf of many others, call on you and your board to accept and conscientiously examine the clear evidence available. Should such evidence so demand, then some Australian banks must in the public interest be deprived of their licenses and appropriate authorities be directed to determine if and where criminal charges should be laid.

Sir, I have no choice in either law or conscience but to advise you of all this and to ask that I and two colleagues, John McLennan (former banker) and James Renton (Lawyer), be allowed to present such prima facie evidence to you and/or the Board of the Reserve Bank as we believe will substantiate the serious allegations I have made.

The reply from Bernie Fraser ten days later was brief:

In the circumstances, and in the absence of any hard evidence of specific wrongdoings by individual banks, I do not believe that discussions between us would serve any useful purpose.

On 2 April, Senator McLean wrote to Bernie Fraser,

Your dismissiveness ... is superficial in the extreme. Indeed it begs the whole question of my letter, which was to offer to present hard evidence to you in a face to face situation.
I am forced to the conclusion that you Sir, who together with others in "responsible public office" are supposedly our collective conscience, do not want to see "hard evidence" because it will (and indeed does) place upon you demands for action.

Silence.

Recently, Paul McLean, fresh from his self-exile to the forests of Tasmania, wrote,

I called for Keating to sack him. But naturally Fraser needed to do nothing more than laugh. He and all his subordinate bankers got away with whatever they wanted because of the extra-ordinary moral ineptitude of the responsible ministers and opposition leaders of the day. Hewson was a banker prior to becoming a politician, and is again now.
Towards the end of my involvement in all this, I sought the support of a personal friend, Ted Pickering, then Minister for Police in NSW. I knew that the fraud revealed in the 'Westpac Letters' had landed finally on his desk. Others had skirted their responsibilities and the matter finished with his NSW Fraud Squad. He smiled and in his inimitable frankness said..." Paul, no government of either political colour, will ever seriously take on the top end of town."

Paul Keating as Treasurer seemed keen to know what was happening on the floor of the WestPac Forex venture and called several times a day, according to one witness. Another witness noted that he and Hawke probably got a share of the commission from the New Zealand bank that had profited from the WestPac losses. A few years later, Chan, who was running the trading floor for the Foreign Currency Loans at WestPac moved to New Zealand to work directly for his banking partner in crime there. Parliament covered up the fraud and refused to even look at the evidence. The Reserve Bank shied from its responsibility knowing it could do so with impunity. All might be guilty of misprision of felony and accessories of criminal fraud.

Then there are the courts...