Hisham denies Australian firm bought brother’s clout

Hishammuddin delivers his speech during the opening of the Dang Wangi district police headquarters, in Kuala Lumpur, June 6, 2011. — Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, June 6 — Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein denied today a report that his brother was paid to help win contracts for an Australian banknote supply firm.

“I am not just denying it, it is not true,” the home minister said at a press conference here.

Australian daily The Age reported that Securency International, half-owned by Australia’s central bank, signed on Liberal Technology as its Malaysian agent in 2009 with the expectation that its biggest shareholder, Datuk Haris Onn Hussein, would “offer it access to, and influence over, Malaysia’s top politicians.”

Haris, also chairman of Liberal Technology, is Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s cousin and brother to Hishammuddin, who will head to Canberra soon to sign a deal which will see Australia transfer 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia and accept 4,000 refugees in return.

“My brother? One, I tell you the truth, I don’t know what my brother is doing. Secondly, I don’t think Australia would do it. Thirdly, there is no link at all to what I’m doing with Australia, simple as that,” the Umno vice president added.

However, Securency is not believed to have won any further banknote supply contracts from the Malaysian government despite engaging Haris, who owns shares in or sits on the board of several companies that have benefited from government concessions like mandatory security labels for cigarette and alcohol manufacturers, and toll highways.

The Age also stressed that it was not suggesting that either Najib or Hishammuddin were involved in Securency’s dealings here.

The company last won a major contract here in 2004 and a smaller one in 1998 with the help of arms broker and former Umno official Abdul Kayum Syed Ahmad.

He has since been arrested and questioned by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) over the deals and his use of commissions paid by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) firm.

Securency, a leading global supplier of plastic banknotes, has been investigated for two years by the Australian Federal Police and the British Serious Fraud Office for allegedly bribing public officials in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Nigeria to win supply contracts.

Under Australian law, it is a criminal offence for a company or individual to pay, or offer a benefit to, foreign government officials or their close relatives to obtain a business advantage.

Australia has yet to prosecute a foreign bribery case, but Securency — which has four RBA-appointed directors on its board — may be the first following a two-year federal investigation and the arrest and questioning of some employees and agents last year. RBA governor Glenn Stevens told an Australian federal parliamentary committee in November that he had not seen any evidence to suggest the bank’s appointees to the Securency board had acted inappropriately.

The central bank plans to sell its stake in Securency.