23 November 2013

Consumers face up to $194 for smart meters


 
VICTORIAN households will be slapped with smart meter fees of up to $194 on electricity bills next year. 

Charges for about 1.6 million homes and small businesses are set to rise from January.

But about a million customers should get a slight discount.

The Australian Energy Regulator has approved 2014 charges of $115 to $194 for the most common type of meter, depending where consumers live.

Homes in Melbourne's north and northwest face the biggest sting.

The hip-pocket hit is part of the $2.3 billion cost for the controversial compulsory rollout (Note by corpau: the compulsory rollout refers to the contract between the government and the electricity businesses and NOT the consumers) of digital devices.

SP AusNet's charge is 23 per cent more, up $30, than this year. United Energy's is 14 per cent higher, and Jemena's is 12 per cent extra.

CitiPower and Powercor charges are 9-10 per cent lower. AER chairman Andrew Reeves said companies that had not recouped full budget costs in the rollout's earlier years could lift fees to catch up.

Others that had spent less than forecast compensated customers with reductions.

"Some were under-recovering revenue in the early years. Others spent less than forecast as the pace of the rollout was slower than expected," Mr Reeves said.

The state's five electricity distributors are authorised to grab more than $1 billion combined from consumers over 2012-15.

Charges vary depending on distributors' technology, installation and operation costs, and customer numbers.

The charges coincide with anger over revelations tens of thousands of smart meter "refusers" risk power bill hikes of up to $150 a year, on top of smart meter costs, as a disconnection alternative.

"Australians in every other state have the right not to have a smart meter," Stop Smart Meters Australia president Marc Florio said.
About 150,000 properties are still to switch.

karen.collier@news.com.au

APPROVED 2014 CHARGES

CitiPower $116.55
Powercor $115.27
Jemena $193.82
SP AusNet $160.21
United Energy $141.33

* For single phase meter

heraldsun.com.au 22 Nov 2013

Another rort by the electricity 'businesses' literally supported by the government.

 This 'utility' fraud is worth billions of dollars annually with paid off bribes and corrupt politicians.

ALL Australians should take a class action law suite against this fraud.

It's all part of the Police State agenda.

Web inventor rails against net spying

THE scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web says a growing tide of surveillance is threatening democracy's future. 
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the World Wide Web Consortium. 

Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the web in 1990, has been a vocal critic of internet surveillance.

He said on Friday that as more people use the internet and social media to "expose wrongdoing," some governments were feeling threatened.

He said the result was a "growing tide of surveillance and censorship" that threatens the future of democracy, warning that "bold steps" must be taken to protect privacy rights and the freedom of opinion online.

His remarks came ahead of the launch in London of a report ranking which countries best use the web.

Sweden was ranked first, followed by Norway, the UK and the United States.

news.com.au 22 Nov 2013

The agenda is much more powerful than what any man or even lobby can ever do to halt this spying.

It is happening and will be happening with no cease date EVER.

Any consitutional law or ammendent, or Human Rights or freedom of expression law that is broken is scoffed at by the 'authories' as they can never be brought to trail before ANY court, as the courts are subservient to the 'corporatocracy'.

$270 hit on Victorian gas bills

HOUSEHOLD gas bills are expected to soar by 30 per cent within two years, slugging families an extra $270 a year. 
 
The shock figures are based on new State Government modelling, and are included in a ­report on the future of the gas market.

The report by the Gas Taskforce, chaired by Peter Reith, says prices should level out by the end of the decade but residential bills would still be about 20 per cent - or $180 - above today's average.

It says the Government should ­remove a ban on controversial coal seam gas exploration and extraction, to boost supplies.

It warns without new ­energy sources, existing "conventional" gas supplies would last between 10 and 27 years, and prices would skyrocket.

Premier Denis Napthine said the Government would consult on CSG, and has ­ordered a scientific report on ­potential effects on underground water.

Reports are expected to be handed to the Government in 2015, after the next election.

Apart from allowing CSG extraction, known as fracking, the report recommends a new gas commissioner, and more compensation for ­aff­ect­ed land owners.

The Gas Taskforce report warns that by 2020, residential gas bills will be 20 per cent higher than today, and that Government modelling shows bills will be "peaking in 2015 at 30 per cent higher than current rates".

Opponents of fracking say it is bad for the environment, and that because of the long lead-time for onshore gas projects, short-term price rises would happen ­regardless.

St Vincent de Paul Society policy manager Gavin Dufty said the Government must ­address rising prices.

Some of the Gas Market Taskforce recommendations: 

* Remove holds on new exploration licences for coal seam gas
* Strengthen laws to underpin best practice onshore gas development
* Appoint a gas commissioner to "engage landholders and communities"
* Develop a new water science and monitoring system
* Remove holds on hydraulic fracturing ("fracking")
* Provide a "royalty holiday" to industry short-term
* Double compensation for people who lose amenities to $20,000
* The productivity commission do a review on gas market reform options

heraldsun.com.au 21 Nov 2013

Another win to the CEO's of the corporatocracy.

These companies under Australian law are NOT utilities, but rather corporations (businesses).

There is NO regulatory body, and it is leterally open slather for the corporate elite.

Another 'fraud' supported by the corporatised government.

Smart Meters - The corporate media lies

The corporate media in Australia is literally owned by three families, Murdoch, Packer and Stokes with an emphasis on biased or selective reporting following a 'government' (business) agenda.

The official picture painted is that the Herald Sun publication is a workers newspaper, sympathetic to the Labour government, whereas The Age is a white collar publication with emphasis on Liberal government 'propaganda'.


Irrespective of which political party the publications sway towards, the objective is not to educate or entice commotion amongst the masses.

In Victoria many articles have made the main stream media about the 'smart meter' implementation in households and small businesses, and some vocal protests locally.

The corporate media has labeled the $2.3 billion project as 'controversial', as the fraud extends to backroom multi-million dollar payouts, falsified tenders, and 'unlawful' acts pushed through.

The corporate media also tells the masses that only pensioners are opposed to the 'smart meter' roll out, which just plainly false. Many people from all walks of life are opposing the installation.


A search in the popular media repository YouTube with the term Smart Meter:


will show an approximate of 476,000 results many of them exposing the truth, contrary to the sanctioned reporting of the corporate media.

A meeting with a prominent Melbourne based barrister led to information obtained, that the barrister was given the order by the bar and his masonic peers, forbidding to talk about the 'smart meters' or to take on matters regarding any law suite.

"This matter is not allowed to see the light of day in the courts as it may expose the power of corporations over the masses, which in turn could ignite civil disobedience" stated the source. 

The law is supposed to be able to be accessed by anyone, but in reality this does not seem to be the case when it comes to 'smart meters'.

Corrupt politicians, ministers and bureaucrats have 'forced' the installation of smart meters on the unsuspecting public, by providing false information to achieve the business objectives.

Here is some information provided to corpau under strict anonymity.


THE FACTS ARE:

1). Victorians have been contractually deceived into having 'smart meters' installed at their premises. 

2). The 'mandate' to install meters is a contractual obligation between the DPI and the electricity companies NOT the customer, and are to be installed under a 'best endeavors'  policy.


3). A 'meter box' (the enclosure where a meter may be mounted inside) is the property of the owner.
     - It can be padlocked, and holes cut out for the meter reader to read the consumption.

4). The braking of a meter box by any 'person' is a criminal 'offence' and is punishable by law.

5). The attempt to make 'smart meters' mandatory breaches our Commonwealth constitution 1901 and our Common Law Rights.

6). The 'Powercor' (LG-E350) and 'Jemena' (i-credit 500) smart meters have not been calibrated to Australian Standards and safety/health and they breach Commonwealth Weights and Measures Act.

7). 'Smart meters' are NOT installed by qualified electricians as 'mandated' by law when dealing with 240V or the power grid connection of devices. 

8). They have not received NATA accreditation, as a result they breach the Commonwealth Crimes Act.

9). They are not UL (Underwriter Laboratories) approved - NO FIRE INSURANCE from faulty meter.

10). Also they breach the Competition and Consumer Act as they are not a public Utility any more; they are a private company/corporation using their power in the market place to force goods and services on the community.

11). Further more they breach international law.

12). It has been alleged that Dr. Britain provided these corporation an exemption to comply with the Australian Standards.  If this is correct then the Minister has also committed a crime.

13). They are (real time) surveillance devices.

14). They DO NOT transmit 4 times per day as falsely stated by Powercor, but rather 1440 times per day.

15). Powercor falsely states that the smart meter transmission radiation is approximately 1/2 of that of an SMS sent by a mobile phone. A test shows 121 times more that of what Powercor states.

Companies / corporations can provide false information to consumers without any real consequences or criminal charges, even in the farcical court system of Australia.

The information provided above may only be relevant to 'smart meters' but as always with law is not limited to only 'smart meters'. Other legal factors are also involved.

There are also the facts on how lawful the alleged law regarding smart meters really is.

This will be posted in another article.

There should be a 'Royal Commission' into this fraud, but the corporate thugs will never allow this to happen.

Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages


• Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism
• Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch
• Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls
• Company says it is legally compelled to comply

Skype worked with intelligence agencies last year to allow Prism to collect video and audio conversations. Photograph: Patrick Sinkel/AP
 
Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

The documents show that:
• Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;
• The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;
• The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;
• Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;
• In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;
• Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".

The latest NSA revelations further expose the tensions between Silicon Valley and the Obama administration. All the major tech firms are lobbying the government to allow them to disclose more fully the extent and nature of their co-operation with the NSA to meet their customers' privacy concerns. Privately, tech executives are at pains to distance themselves from claims of collaboration and teamwork given by the NSA documents, and insist the process is driven by legal compulsion.

In a statement, Microsoft said: "When we upgrade or update products we aren't absolved from the need to comply with existing or future lawful demands." The company reiterated its argument that it provides customer data "only in response to government demands and we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers".

In June, the Guardian revealed that the NSA claimed to have "direct access" through the Prism program to the systems of many major internet companies, including Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

Blanket orders from the secret surveillance court allow these communications to be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that the target is not a US citizen and is not on US soil at the time. Targeting US citizens does require an individual warrant, but the NSA is able to collect Americans' communications without a warrant if the target is a foreign national located overseas.

Since Prism's existence became public, Microsoft and the other companies listed on the NSA documents as providers have denied all knowledge of the program and insisted that the intelligence agencies do not have back doors into their systems.

Microsoft's latest marketing campaign, launched in April, emphasizes its commitment to privacy with the slogan: "Your privacy is our priority."

Similarly, Skype's privacy policy states: "Skype is committed to respecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal data, traffic data and communications content."

But internal NSA newsletters, marked top secret, suggest the co-operation between the intelligence community and the companies is deep and ongoing.

The latest documents come from the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division, described by Snowden as the "crown jewel" of the agency. It is responsible for all programs aimed at US communications systems through corporate partnerships such as Prism.

The files show that the NSA became concerned about the interception of encrypted chats on Microsoft's Outlook.com portal from the moment the company began testing the service in July last year.

Within five months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com chats.

A newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: "MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the issue. "These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012."
Two months later, in February this year, Microsoft officially launched the Outlook.com portal.
Another newsletter entry stated that NSA already had pre-encryption access to Outlook email. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption."

Microsoft's co-operation was not limited to Outlook.com. An entry dated 8 April 2013 describes how the company worked "for many months" with the FBI – which acts as the liaison between the intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley on Prism – to allow Prism access without separate authorization to its cloud storage service SkyDrive.

The document describes how this access "means that analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this – a process step that many analysts may not have known about".

The NSA explained that "this new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response". It continued: "This success is the result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established."

A separate entry identified another area for collaboration. "The FBI Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) team is working with Microsoft to understand an additional feature in Outlook.com which allows users to create email aliases, which may affect our tasking processes."

The NSA has devoted substantial efforts in the last two years to work with Microsoft to ensure increased access to Skype, which has an estimated 663 million global users.

One document boasts that Prism monitoring of Skype video production has roughly tripled since a new capability was added on 14 July 2012. "The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete 'picture'," it says.

Eight months before being bought by Microsoft, Skype joined the Prism program in February 2011.

According to the NSA documents, work had begun on smoothly integrating Skype into Prism in November 2010, but it was not until 4 February 2011 that the company was served with a directive to comply signed by the attorney general.

The NSA was able to start tasking Skype communications the following day, and collection began on 6 February. "Feedback indicated that a collected Skype call was very clear and the metadata looked complete," the document stated, praising the co-operation between NSA teams and the FBI. "Collaborative teamwork was the key to the successful addition of another provider to the Prism system."

ACLU technology expert Chris Soghoian said the revelations would surprise many Skype users. "In the past, Skype made affirmative promises to users about their inability to perform wiretaps," he said. "It's hard to square Microsoft's secret collaboration with the NSA with its high-profile efforts to compete on privacy with Google."

The information the NSA collects from Prism is routinely shared with both the FBI and CIA. A 3 August 2012 newsletter describes how the NSA has recently expanded sharing with the other two agencies.

The NSA, the entry reveals, has even automated the sharing of aspects of Prism, using software that "enables our partners to see which selectors [search terms] the National Security Agency has tasked to Prism".
The document continues: "The FBI and CIA then can request a copy of Prism collection of any selector…" As a result, the author notes: "these two activities underscore the point that Prism is a team sport!"
In its statement to the Guardian, Microsoft said:
We have clear principles which guide the response across our entire company to government demands for customer information for both law enforcement and national security issues. First, we take our commitments to our customers and to compliance with applicable law very seriously, so we provide customer data only in response to legal processes.
Second, our compliance team examines all demands very closely, and we reject them if we believe they aren't valid. Third, we only ever comply with orders about specific accounts or identifiers, and we would not respond to the kind of blanket orders discussed in the press over the past few weeks, as the volumes documented in our most recent disclosure clearly illustrate.
Finally when we upgrade or update products legal obligations may in some circumstances require that we maintain the ability to provide information in response to a law enforcement or national security request. There are aspects of this debate that we wish we were able to discuss more freely. That's why we've argued for additional transparency that would help everyone understand and debate these important issues.
In a joint statement, Shawn Turner, spokesman for the director of National Intelligence, and Judith Emmel, spokeswoman for the NSA, said:
The articles describe court-ordered surveillance – and a US company's efforts to comply with these legally mandated requirements. The US operates its programs under a strict oversight regime, with careful monitoring by the courts, Congress and the Director of National Intelligence. Not all countries have equivalent oversight requirements to protect civil liberties and privacy.
They added: "In practice, US companies put energy, focus and commitment into consistently protecting the privacy of their customers around the world, while meeting their obligations under the laws of the US and other countries in which they operate."

• This article was amended on 11 July 2013 to reflect information from Microsoft that it did not make any changes to Skype to allow Prism collection on or around July 2012.

theguardian.com

All U.S. companies MUST provide  information to 'authorities' upon request, as mandated by law.

This is  part of the policy to catalog ALL information over the internet.

There is no law that states that a company must provide factually accurate information to the masses, and there as there are NO penalties for those who do not.

Another farce in the face of the public.

The communists dictatorial regime of China has similar policies to that of western authorities.

22 November 2013

Police to gain protection from being sued

The government has made moves to protect police officers from being sued.

Premier Campbell Newman introduced the Public Service Amendment bill on Tuesday, announcing it was designed to protect "public service employees, police officers and other persons in particular circumstances relating to engaging in conduct in an official capacity" from civil action.

Mr Newman said he was following through on an election promise to review the laws.

"Police perform a critical role in ensuring safe communities in Queensland," he said.

"In the often highly complex situations they respond to, and despite performing their roles professionally and in good faith, the nature of their business means there are occasional incidents that cause injury to people or damage to property."

The legislation amendments are designed to protect state employees who are working in an official capacity from civil liability.

Instead, that liability will be transferred to the state. But the legislation does include a clause which allows the government to recoup costs from state employees who "have engaged in conduct other than in good faith, and with gross negligence".

The Queensland Police Union had been calling for the change for several years, after a Brisbane constable was found guilty of an assault of a 65-year-old homeless man in 2006.

Bruce Rowe brought a private prosecution against Constable Benjamin Arndt following his own arrest. Mr Arndt was found guilty in 2011 and fined $1000 and ordered to pay court costs.

At the time, the police union decried the situation as an attack on how police did their job and demanded the law be changed.

On Tuesday, QPU president Ian Leavers called the legislation "a great start for police to achieve criminal and civil protections for police acting in good faith without gross negligence".

"...We are very pleased with the introduction of the bill as it now gives police greater peace of mind as they go about their job protecting Queensland," he said.

The bill has been referred to a parliamentary committee for review and is expected to be passed early next year.


brisbanetimes.com.au 20 Nov 2013

Australia's police 'force' is exactly that, an oppressive force, in truly a prison isle.

The actions of governments shows how the 'force' will be oppressive against the masses.

The police are supposed to be keepers of peace, according to the oath, but are factually corporate bullies, and thugs.

Australia's police force is a business operating purely for profit, a fact that the corporate media are reluctant to publish.

The following is a list of 'businesses' registered in the respective states of Australia.

The police are there purely for REVENUE COLLECTION. 


Entity Name: AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE
ABN: 17 864 931 143
Main Business Location: ACT 2600
Trading Name: AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL POLICE, ASIA PACIFIC GROUP, Australian Protective Service, AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF CRIMINAL INTELLIGENCE, AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF POLICE MANAGEMENT


Entity Name: DEPT OF POLICE & EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT (TAS)
ABN: 19 173 586 474
Main Business Location: TAS 7000
Trading Name: TASMANIA POLICE


Entity Name: NSW POLICE FORCE
ABN: 43 408 613 180
Main Business Location: NSW 2150
Trading Name: NSW POLICE FORCE, NSW POLICE, NSW POLICE DEPARTMENT, NSW POLICE SERVICE  

Entity Name: POLICE DEPARTMENT (VIC)
ABN: 63 446 481 493
Main Business Location: VIC 3008
Trading Name: VICTORIA POLICE


Entity Name: QUEENSLAND POLICE SERVICE
ABN: 29 409 225 509
Main Business Location: QLD 4000
Trading Name: QUEENSLAND POLICE SERVICE


Entity Name: SOUTH AUSTRALIA POLICE
ABN: 93 799 021 552
Main Business Location: SA 5000
Trading Name: SOUTH AUSTRALIAN POLICE, Commissioner of Police, SAPES Games, SOUTH AUSTRALIA POLICE, South Australia Police & Emergency Services Games, SA Police, SAPOL


Entity Name: WESTERN AUSTRALIA POLICE
ABN: 91 724 684 688
Main Business Location: WA 6004
Trading Name: Western Australian Police


Stuxnet evolution: NSA input turned stealth weapon into internet-roaming spyware


 Reuters / Laszlo Balogh

Forensic analysis of the Stuxnet cyber-warfare operation reveals how an initial version of the virus, which was ‘a display of absolute cyber-power’ evolved into a simpler self-replicating and home-reporting malware that was eventually detected.

There were two distinct versions of Stuxnet, the computer virus that is widely believed to have been developed by the US and Israel to hamper uranium enrichment at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. The people behind it likely underwent a shift of goals sometime along the cyber-warfare campaign, which involved bringing in new IT people with a whole new arrange of secret knowledge.
The news comes from Ralph Langner, an independent German cyber-security expert specializing in control systems, who has been heavily involved in the study of the Stuxnet and the damage it caused, and shared his conclusions with Foreign Policy magazine.

Speed bug & pressure bug

The earlier version of the virus code was submitted to a computer security site back in 2007, but it was years later when it was identified as one by experts dissecting later versions of Stuxnet. The old Stuxnet targeted Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges in a different way and was also much more difficult to detect. But it didn’t have the virulence of its descendant, Langner writes.

Both versions were designed to take industrial controllers, the digital tools regulating the operation of the centrifuge cascades. The latter virus overloaded them by changing the speed of rotors and making them spin in a highly erosive manner, a routine that could be perceivably detected by simple observation, should Natanz engineers remove protective headsets from the centrifuges.

Unlike it, the earlier code acted in a more elaborate way utilizing the technological peculiarity of the Natanz facility. Iran’s centrifuges there are an altered copy of an obsolete European design. Since Iran doesn’t have access to precision manufacturing of centrifuge details, it has to operate the ones it produces at a mode which makes them prone to malfunction.


Connector pipes are equipped with isolation valves. The purpose of the valves is to isolate centrifuges from a cascade that start to vibrate, as signaled by vibration sensors (highlighted in magenta). Picture from ‘To Kill a Centrifuge’, a report on Stuxnet malware by Ralph Langner. Connector pipes are equipped with isolation valves. The purpose of the valves is to isolate centrifuges from a cascade that start to vibrate, as signaled by vibration sensors (highlighted in magenta). Picture from ‘To Kill a Centrifuge’, a report on Stuxnet malware by Ralph Langner.
A special protection system shuts off those malfunctioning centrifuges, which are then replaced while the others are still working. And if several centrifuges in a single group of 164 machines get kicked out, the same system vents off excessive pressure.
The earlier Stuxnet took control of that protection system and tricked it into building up the pressure just enough to speed up erosion of the centrifuges, but not allowing a catastrophic failure.
Researchers initially believed that the two methods of attack were meant to complement each other, but this was not the case, Langner says. Rather it points to “changing priorities that most likely were accompanied by a change in stakeholders.”

Change of goals

Another sign of the shift is the difference in infection methods of the two versions. The earlier Stuxnet had to be manually installed to controller systems at the facility by a knowing agent, while the latter version was designed to self-replicate and spread through USB-drives and laptops of unwitting engineers.


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, 350 km (217 miles) south of Tehran, April 8, 2008. (Reuters / Presidential official website / Handout)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visits the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, 350 km (217 miles) south of Tehran, April 8, 2008. (Reuters / Presidential official website / Handout)

The code also used a number of previously unknown vulnerabilities in a Windows operating system – so-called ground zero exploits – and used false digital certificates to pose as valid software.

“The development of the overpressure attack can be viewed as the work of an in-group of top-notch industrial control system security experts and coders who lived in an exotic ecosystem quite remote from standard IT security,” Langner explains.

“The overspeed attacks point to the circle widening and acquiring a new center of gravity. If Stuxnet is American-built – and, according to published reports, it most certainly is – then there is only one logical location for this center of gravity: Fort Meade, Maryland, the home of the National Security Agency,” he adds.

Costly disguise

Both version of the virus were powerful enough to trigger a catastrophic failure, damaging hundreds of centrifuges in a single incident, but instead opted for slow, covert sabotage.

“The attackers were in a position where they could have broken the victim's neck, but they chose continuous periodical choking instead,” Langner says.

This self-restraint actually boosted considerably the cost of developing the malware.

“I estimate that well over 50 percent of Stuxnet's development cost went into efforts to hide the attack, with the bulk of that cost dedicated to the overpressure attack which represents the ultimate in disguise – at the cost of having to build a fully-functional mockup IR-1 centrifuge cascade operating with real uranium hexafluoride,” he explained.

In the end the strategy paid off. Langer believes that the damage caused by the virus stalled Iran’s uranium enrichment operation by about two years – longer than what a massive one-time crippling of the facility would have caused.

Deliberate exposure?

Langner challenges the common narrative that Stuxnet ‘escaped’ the Natanz facility by accident to be eventually detected and studied by cyber-security experts. He cites the tools in the virus, which allowed it to send reports from infected computers to command-and-control servers.

“It appears that the attackers were clearly anticipating (and accepting) a spread to noncombatant systems and were quite eager to monitor that spread closely,” he says. “This monitoring would eventually deliver information on contractors working at Natanz, their other clients, and maybe even clandestine nuclear facilities in Iran.”
 
He adds that Stuxnet exposure had a side benefit for the United States in terms of reputational gains. 

“If another country – maybe even an adversary – had been first in demonstrating proficiency in the digital domain, it would have been nothing short of another ‘Sputnik’ moment in US history.”

rt.com. 21 Nov 2013

Corrupt governments create viruses, which is apparently acceptable, in order to sabotage a country's independence from the banking system / oil dependence of the financial elite.

AFP and RBA websites suffer cyber attacks

The corrupt business organisations known as AFP (Australian Federal Police) and the RBA (Reserve Bank of Australia) have allegedly been hacked.

Governments and corporations routinely 'hack' into users computers without their consent or knowledge or even court orders, but those actions are not deemed illegal.

The following article has been posted in the Sydney Morning Herald:

The AFP website crashed after an apparent cyber attack.
The Australian Federal Police and the Reserve Bank have been victims of apparent cyber attacks.
A spokeswoman from the federal police said the website was still operating when staff left work on Wednesday evening but noticed that it had gone down early on Thursday morning. The website appeared to have been restored by 8.15am.

The department is unaware of the exact time the site went down.
“The AFP takes any attack on its, or any other government website very seriously,” the spokeswoman said.


“Individuals who become involved in these types of cyber attacks need to be aware that they are committing a criminal offence.”

The federal police said the attack did not affect its IT systems and that no sensitive information is hosted on its website.

The Australian Reserve Bank website was also targeted. A spokeswoman said that it had been the subject of a denial of service attack since midnight on Tuesday, but its systems ensured the site did not go down.

"We've got denial of service protection for our website, which has been working effectively. We've had no outage on the website at all and all our systems are secure," she said.

A member of the activist-hacking group Anonymous Indonesia has reportedly claimed responsibility for the cyber attacks.

The attacks come following reports a cyber battle has been intensifying between Australia and Indonesia following spying revelations on Indonesian officials.

“If there's a full-scale cyber war [between the countries], then we will suffer more since our cyber security is still weak compared to the Australians',” Gatot Dewobroto, the spokesman for Indonesia's Communication and Information Technology Ministry, told The Jakarta Post.

According to Indonesian media, a hacking group, which was referred to as "Anon Australia" claimed to have attacked the Garuda Indonesia website in retaliation for the hacking of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service website between November 8 and 11.

“Clearly someone is trying to frame us to start trouble,” Anonymous Australia said in its statement on pastebin.com last week.

smh.com.au  21 Nov 2013

21 November 2013

Power fines for meter protesters

VICTORIANS resisting smart­meters could be slugged hundreds of dollars extra for electricity if they continue to reject the rollout. 
 
Tens of thousands of customers risk being charged up to $150 more a year - on top of smartmeter fees - as an ­alternative to disconnection.

Energy Minister Nicholas Kotsiras said: "Distributors still have the right to cut people off if they repeatedly refuse but I believe this is a more humane way to go."

Many objectors, who claim the digital meter rollout is ­unjust or a health hazard, are believed to be pensioners who would face bill increases.

The controversial $2.3 billion project won't be completed by this year's December 31 target, despite years of warnings that installations are mandatory.

More than 2.5 million homes and small businesses ­already have smartmeters but about 150,000 were not converted as of late last month.

About half of the unfitted properties were "refusals" and the rest delays, Mr Kotsiras said.

Planned new regulations will force companies to compensate consumers if they have never attempted a meter installation by June 30 next year.

Extra costs could be separately clawed back from customers refusing to replace manually-read meters from March 1, 2015.

"We need to make sure the costs of running two systems are not spread on to all consumers. It is preferable to getting police involved, or disconnecting," Mr Kotsiras said.

"Distribution companies wishing to recover the costs will apply to the Australian ­Energy Regulator to approve a charge."

An industry source believed that would be about $120-$150 a year.

Mr Kotsiras was confident most people would embrace smartmeters once the benefits were understood.
The rollout has been riddled with cost blowouts, mismanagement claims and health and privacy concerns.
The Coalition pressed on with the former Labor government initiative in late 2011 after a review concluded too much money had already been spent to turn back.

Smartmeters, which record electricity use every 30 minutes, give detailed power use information and flexible "time-of-use" tariff options.

"Smartmeters also mean faster and cheaper reconnections, an end to estimated bills and better reliability as electricity companies can pinpoint faults and act more quickly to fix them," Mr Kotsiras said.

heraldsun.com.au 17 Nov 2013

Australia is ruled by a fascist corporate dictatorship, akin to concentration camp style of 'Nazi' Germany.

It is not about how dangerous or not smart meters really are but about choice / democracy.

The illusion of democracy is seen on the 'smart meter' front.

The fraud surrounding the so called 'laws' and kick backs to politicians and ministers regarding smart meter implementation is kept well away from the public eye.

How the government owns your children

One can easily see how especially in today's society, the old phrase 'knowledge is power' holds monumental strength.

IF_Blog_Youth_enslaved
Both knowledge and power is kept away from the masses in order to keep them dumbed down and subservient.

The corporate media dumb down the minds of the children of the general populous with 'useless' television 'programming' with a plethora of reality shows, television series boasting 'hooked' number of Australians.

The legal profession provides information at exorbitant rates to the paying masses, which in turn feeds the whole legal ecology from clerks to judges all funded by the public.

Some news does filter out from the offices of the corporate media on how some laws effect people, or even how some forgotten 1800's law was used by a city council in the Victorian coastal town of Barwon Heads to shut down a local publican.

Information has recently been obtained by corpau on how the government has obtained ownership of every person born in Australia.

This information should be read by every single 'person' born in Australia.

A source within the industry has provided the information on  the strict assurance of confidentiality, explaining how the government has claimed your offspring.

There are many laws in Australia, that the general populous may have heard about.

What is commonly known as local government law, namely city councils are factually unlawful entities (trading as businesses - and NOT government)  not recognised by the general public (1988 referendum) nor the 'constitution'. This fact is hastily reported by the (government lap dog) corporate media, as it is a $ 33 billion a year industry feeding of the uneducated and subservient masses.


Corporate laws e.g. parking fines, traffic violations, speeding fines by police, dog registration fines by city councils etc can be dismissed in court if one knows how.

Corporate laws are 'overwritten' by the most basic law, that called 'common law'.

Now, a law not commonly talked about that is used to obtain 'ownership' of your child by 'Corporate Australia' is known as Maritime / Admiralty law'.

Basically in a nutshell, when a mother gives birth to a child, the mother abandons the child from the vessel (amniotic / birth sac), and the government claims ownership. The ownership is claimed by the 'registration' of the child to the (corporate) government of the state in which the child was born in.

Your 'person' then appears in capitals (Capitis deminutio), and you are a possession of the (corporate) government.

Also, unknowingly to you, you are traded by the banks as a 'commodity'.

You as a 'person' is referred to in government or official letters as a corporate entity, e.g. JOHN CITIZEN or John CITIZEN.

The whole 'Stolen Generations' farce is based on the presumption that the government owns your child born in Australia.


From the moment you are born in Australia you are unknowingly enslaved by the corporation known as the government.

20 November 2013

ASIC supporting corporate loan fraud

Watchdog asleep on Australia's sub-prime scandal

<i>Illustration: Michael Mucci</i>
A leading consumer activist claims the corporate regulator has not only failed to investigate hundreds of cases of loan fraud put before it but, as a consequence, has covered up a systemic banking failure.

As the deadline for submissions for the Senate Inquiry into the Performance of the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) closed this week, veteran consumer rights activist Denise Brailey filed a brutal assessment of ASIC’s failure to investigate the cases of loan fraud.

Already under fire for its failure to prosecute the Leighton Holdings bribery scandal and the Commonwealth Bank financial planners and Securency debacles, the submission by Denise Brailey turns up the pressure on the embattled regulator. A date for Senate hearings is yet to be set.

BusinessDay reviewed the documents of dozens of victims – which are lodged on Brailey’s Banking and Finance Consumers Support Association (BFCSA) website – and found the evidence supported Brailey’s claims of systemic fraud.

ASIC and the banks have long argued that any irregularities that Denise Brailey has identified were the fault of rogue mortgage brokers. Further, they have claimed the problem is contained to ‘low-doc’ loans (usually for small business).
 
However, Brailey’s submission found that 36 per cent of all ‘toxic’ loans had been arranged directly by bank officers, with no broker involved. And 18 per cent of all toxic loans were ‘full doc’ loans, arranged by banks and not brokers.

The overall numbers in Brailey’s survey are large and involve complaints against most banks and mortgage providers. The survey is taken from almost 800 loans, involving almost 1,200 people (many are couples) who have failed to get a response through official channels and came to her for help. The bulk of the claims pertain to the ‘Big Four’ – ANZ, Westpac, CBA and National Australia banks – who dominate the mortgage market.

“In 2005, Major Banks took control of 85 per cent of the Low Doc market, yet ASIC neither warned the public, nor took action via the courts against any lender,” says the submission.
 
“For a staggering fourteen years, ASIC turned its regulatory back on these victims … scandals that are only now bubbling to the surface.”

A number of victims canvassed by BusinessDay confirmed Denise Brailey’s claim that their Loan Application Forms (LAFs) had been tampered with, usually to inflate the customer’s assets and income in order to increase their borrowing capacity.

BusinessDay will publish further victim case studies over the following days.

In her submission, Brailey repeated the claim made earlier this year that ‘there was not one clean LAF’ among her BFSCA members. Many of these members had been advised by Brailey to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). FOS is funded by the banks and other financial institutions on a pro rata basis according to the complaints made against them.

The Brailey submission also details the efforts by her and her members to get ASIC to investigate the fraudulent LAFs.

ASIC responded in June this year that Brailey had failed to provide them with sufficient evidence of fraud even though every case appears to show irregular entries on the documentation. Further, FOS, ASIC and the financial institutions involved have failed to produce LAFs or missing pages in the LAFs for Brailey’s members upon their request.

ASIC responded to some 70 complaints with a form letter advising victims to get a lawyer.

Plaintiff lawyers contacted by BusinessDay said the problem with a legal redress to loan fraud – rather that regulatory action – was that in most cases the victims had received a benefit (the loan funds) even if they could not afford to fund the loan.

The effect however of inflating the customers’ borrowing capacity was that many borrowers could no longer afford to finance their loan repayments. Had there been no tampering with the LAF therefore, the customers would never have been lumped with loans whose repayments they cannot meet.

Brailey describes the regulatory failure as ‘Australia’s sub-prime scandal’. Unlike the imbroglio in the US where the systemic sale of ‘securitised’ or bundled-up mortgages enabled the banks to lower their lending standards and sell more mortgages, lending standards in Australia appear to have been relaxed by inflating borrowing capacity on Loan Application Forms.

America’s largest bank, JP Morgan, has just reached a $US13 billion settlement with the Securities & Exchanges Commission (SEC) to help resolve complaints against the bank. Some $US9 billion has been earmarked to cover fines and penalties and $US4 billion goes to struggling home-owners.

As to the systemic nature of the loan fraud, the Brailey submission argues the banks determined credit levels by adjusting their customers’ financial details by way of a ‘Service Calculator’.

“I met with another (ASIC) Commissioner in February, 2013. The Chairman of ASIC had written to BFCSA, asking that I produce the evidence mentioned to the Senate on August 8, 2012.

“The evidence was twofold: firstly, the service calculator was ATTACHED to the loan application form.  Banks insisted the clients sign to say “we have read and understood everything” and were then given only three pages to sign from a bundle that was usually 39 pages thick” says the Senate submission.

“They received no copies of this bundle. The banks now say the “Service Calculator is an internal document with sensitive information”. We know, as we have recently uncovered a few of these gems including the ‘work sheets’. So if the Service Calculator’s printed form was attached to the LAF, why is it classified as an internal document and why is ASIC and its (external dispute resolvers such as FOS) … siding with the banks and refusing to use their powers to demand those copies of the entire bundle be handed over?
“It is obvious to our members that the LAF, and the service calculator attached, played a crucial role in the fraudulent conduct of the banks to enable automatic computerised approval of mortgage loans and credit cards.  ASIC had plenty of these copies, dating back to 2002 received by the regulator, from over 90 of our members in letters to ASIC in July 2012.

“An additional 53 letters were sent without the evidence attached, but with a description and a specific List of Discrepancies added after the signature was obtained and without the consumers’ knowledge or authority.

“Why has ASIC refused assistance to consumers?  Why has ASIC failed to use their extensive powers of recovery of the very documents customers ought to have been given copies of from the very beginning?”
ASIC responded to the Brailey claims by saying there was no evidence of the breaches to which Brailey attests and, in any case, it did not have jurisdiction to act.

“Rather pursuing individual remedies ASIC’s role is to take on matters where there is evidence of systemic or widespread breaches of the law,” said a spokesman.

However ASIC’s role, which will be subject to scrutiny by the Senate as early as next month, is far broader than it claims, says the Brailey submission.

According to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001, ASIC has “the function of monitoring and promoting market integrity and consumer protection in relation to the Australian financial system”.

Breaches or not, 800 loans written on the back of wrong data in loan application forms is no coincidence. These are just the cases which we know about, thanks to Denise Brailey's untiring work on behalf of victims. And the failure of regulators and banks to ensure their customers get their loan documents upon request begs a thorough examination.

smh.com.au 24 Oct 2013

Another fraud 'supported' by the government.
 
ASIC is a 'business' set up by the government working for corporations and NOT in the interest of the general populous.
 
These so called 'failures' as described by the corporate media, are deliberate actions by ASIC.
 
Another corrupt government organisation.
 
It truly pays well to be a (supported) corporate criminal in Australia. 
 
Australia's banking CEO's are responsible for (some of) the largest frauds in the country, BUT the media is NOT reporting this.
 

19 November 2013

Former magistrate Simon Cooper avoids jail


 Simon Cooper

A former magistrate has been sentenced to three years' prison for indecently assaulting two teenage boys nearly 30 years ago.

Simon Mitchell Cooper, 56, however, walked from court after Judge Stephen Norrish, from NSW who was asked to preside over the case, wholly suspended his jail term.

Judge Norrish said while the two youths, who had been aged between 17 and 18 at the time of offending, had suffered damage as a result of Cooper's offending, the former lawyer who rose to become a councillor, mayor, senior crown prosecutor and magistrate had shown he was capable of redemption.

There were gasps in the courtroom as Judge Norrish handed down his sentence.

Outside the County Court, one of the victims encouraged others to come forward to ensure their voices were heard and perpetrators held to account.

"Today is a significant day, it's a day that has demonstrated that if you're a victim of sexual assault that you should have the courage, the belief because you're going to have the support of the police force, the judiciary, the independence and I think if one other person can stand up and speak the truth from what's occurred with me, I think that’s a great thing for society," he said.

Cooper sat, leaning forward and clasping his hands throughout most of the sentencing.

The court heard he suffered from anxiety and had suffered a panic attack on the day of his arrest for the offences and later been hospitalised.

In August, Cooper pleaded guilty to seven charges of indecent assault that occurred between 1984 and 1986 and resigned as a magistrate.

Judge Norrish said he accepted that Cooper had only partial recollection of the offences and had been genuinely shocked when one of the victims confronted him earlier this year in a conversation that was secretly recorded.

Judge Norrish said the conversation had left Cooper "petrified" about the consequences of his past crimes as it was obvious to him "that his world was crashing around him".

"I accept that he was genuinely shocked by the allegations coming to light," Judge Norrish said.

The court heard Cooper was a young lawyer, aged 27, when he committed the offending that mostly involved inappropriate touching.

Judge Norrish said it had taken years for the victim who suffered the most to admit to his parents what had happened and then courageously go to the police.

The court heard that Cooper had written a love letter to one of his victims that read: "I love you with all of my heart. Please f--- me at your earliest convenience".

Judge Norrish said Cooper had lost his reputation, status, occupation and endured public humiliation and damage to his marriage and rightly "suffered a spectacular fall from grace."

He said Cooper had often been under the influence of alcohol at the time of his offending and that since he committed his crimes had led a life of respected public service.

Character references given to the court from a Victorian County Court judge, a magistrate and senior crown prosecutor spoke of Cooper as a man of integrity, honesty and courage in his personal and professional dealings, Judge Norrish said.

Judge Norrish said he had taken into account Cooper’s guilty pleas and that he believed that he posed an "almost non-existent" threat to other young people.

He suspended Cooper's jail sentence for three years.

Cooper was supported in the County Court by his family and made no comment to waiting media outside the court.

theage.com.au 19 Nov 2013

This is another indication of how appalling the (Anglo-Masonic) 'justice' system works.

Australia's courts are NOT about 'justice' but rather function to the benefit of their 'brethren' or colleagues and are factually places of business / commerce / trading. You have to agree to go to court.

Former magistrate Simon Cooper would NOT attend court if he knew was going to jail. The verdict was decided before the attendance in the court rooms. The court appearance was just a charade for the general populous.

This farce called a trail is actually a failure of 'justice' for the molested boys.

The County Court is a registered business with the ABN of 32 790 228 959, which is owned and operated by the Liberty Group with links to the Rothschilds.

Every barrister, Q.C, magistrate or judge makes an oath first and foremost to the court, secondly to their colleagues, and lastly to the clients, which in the industry is known as the 'three C's'. This is a well known fact within the industry, but (deliberately???) not mentioned by the corporate media.

The interests of the clients come last and are heavily outweighed by the former two.
 
Simon Cooper may as well be laughing at the cameras and not smirking.

18 November 2013

Stuart Wemyss - Another financial fraud?

In the shady world of banking and finance, where the majority of deals are done behind closed doors, where insider trading plays a huge part of so called 'success stories' come many names which the general populous may be familiar with.

The likes of Rene Rivkin, who flaunted his apparent wealth in dodgy television commercials after 12am (cheaper advertising rates) urging the plebs to invest in his scams or his trading company.

Another name which also may be familiar to the masses would be Eugene Kukuy ( alias Henry Kaye) who was responsible for a billion dollar fraud in property investments, involving developers, bankers, mortgage brokers, politicians and paid off corrupt judges who ultimately let him go free.

Another fraudster was Richard Pratt of the Visy (recycling) business, where the extent of the fraud was in the magnitude of $750 million dollars.

To the uneducated ('lay') person or Australian, the financial system of western banking may seem logical or even legitimate, but in reality it is a system based entirely on fraud, a fact that is not mentioned by the (government lap dog) corporate media.

Welcome to the site of an alleged mortgage broker, Stuart Wemyss from the website
http://brokerrevolution.com.au/

On the website it states that:

"This not my website - I don't own it. It's open for all to adopt it as their own"

A simple websearch via whois.sc will reveal that the above site brokerrevolution.com.au is registered by MORELOANS.COM.AU PTY LTD (ACN 155564579) with the registrant contact name of Stuart Wemyss.

 The domain name of moreloans.com.au is registered by PROSOLUTION GROUP PTY LTD (ABN: 54096725370) with the contact name of Stuart Wemyss.

Eugene Kukuy (aka Henry Kaye) registered over 140 companies for the sole purpose of fraud, under the ever so watchful eye of Business Affairs and the ACCC.

The Australian legal system allows for fraudsters to flourish under the protection of different company names which in turn are set up for the specific purpose to defraud the masses of their hard earned income and nest egg finances.

John Hartman tells court how he and Oliver Curtis made millions from insider trading

 

Oliver Curtis, wife Roxy Jacenko and daughter Pixie-Rose at their home in Sydney; Curtis has pleaded not guilty to the charges Source: Supplied
 
IT was with some regret that Oliver Curtis told his friends they would not be taking the private jet from Whistler to Las Vegas. 

They would instead have to settle for a helicopter, but there was an upside: Oli (as he is known to his friends) would have more cash to shout the boys in Vegas during their North American holiday.

"Small change of heart . . . I have decided that the jet would not be as good as spreading the love over the entire trip, so here we go," Curtis wrote to a group of eight friends in September 2007.

"We now have Helijet picking us up on the 12th of Jan to transport us to Whistler. We then have the same chopper picking us up from Whistler on the 27th to take us back to Vancouver, as we will all be very hungover and not enjoy a 2 hour drive."

The trip would set each member of the group back about $10,000, but this was on top of Oli generously offering to pay their entertainment budget in Las Vegas, luxury chauffeured transport, nights at the Wynn casino and the best strip clubs Vegas could offer.

At the time Curtis was 23, as was his best mate and fellow traveller John Hartman.

Hartman told the Downing Centre local court in Sydney this week that the holiday was paid for from insider trading worth "millions of dollars" that he and Curtis were behind between 2007 and 2008.

Curtis, 27, now married to public relations queen Roxy Jacenko, pleaded not guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit insider trading, a crime that now carries a maximum prison sentence of five years.

Turned star witness for the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, Hartman spent the week in the witness dock at Curtis's committal hearing detailing how the pair set up an account and transmitted trading information on an encrypted BlackBerry messaging system known as "pinning".

They are the children of east Sydney's elite. Curtis is the son of businessman Nick Curtis, chairman of Lynas, and Hartman is the son of Keith Hartman, the so-called "obstetrician to the stars". The two were childhood neighbours and both attended the prestigious Sydney Jesuit school St Ignatius' College, Riverview together.

They also started in finance together in 2007, as the market hit a high before the global financial crisis.
As an equities trader at brokerage firm Orion Asset Management, Hartman, at 23, earned just over $350,000, including his bonus.

Despite this, he embarked on a highly risky series of insider trades and front-running that made him at least $1.9 million.

For that crime he has already served 15 months in prison, becoming the youngest Australian convicted of insider trading when he was found guilty in 2010.

In Hartman's appeal against his initial three-year minimum sentence, the judge referred to the need to deter "21-year-old masters of the universe", a reference to the bond trader Sherman McCoy in Bonfire of the Vanities.

Perhaps a more contemporary comparison for Hartman's and Curtis's lifestyle would be the forthcoming Martin Scorsese adaptation of the story of Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street.

At one stage, Belfort, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, tells the viewer "we were making more money than we knew what to do with".

When asked how much the pair allegedly made in just one year of their inside trading, Hartman was similarly unsure.

"To begin with, tens of thousands, then into hundreds of thousands. In one year, I could not give you an exact figure, but millions of dollars," Hartman told the court.

He claimed that over a drink Curtis once told him that "there was no easier money in the world being made than this".

The plan was easy enough.

Hartman said he would send Curtis the stocks that Orion intended to trade in via the BlackBerry PIN system. Curtis would then notify him with an "OK, will do" when he had placed the trades in their account.

"I would wait for Oli to tell me that he had finished placing the trade . . . Once I got that I would begin trading for Orion."

So as not to arouse suspicion, Hartman alleges that Curtis paid him his share through gifts.

Emails between the pair show discussions about a $60,000 Mini Cooper S that Hartman wanted.

"Yea agreed, we will go and order this weekend," Hartman wrote in June 2007, the court heard.

Not long after, a payment was made for $60,000 into Hartman's bank account from Encounter Investments, a company ASIC alleges was set up by Curtis to hold the earnings from their trades.

As well as a Ducati motorcycle and the North American holiday, Curtis provided a $3000-a-week apartment on Bondi Beach that Hartman lived in rent-free with Oli and his girlfriend.

The two partied hard, with Hartman regularly spending more than $1500 in a night at East Sydney bars such as the Golden Sheaf and Four in Hand.

Drugs and gambling were also ever-present, with exchanges revealed between Hartman and his elder brother Edward Hartman discussing the fixing of Group I horse races and buying cocaine.

Edward Hartman is now in New York as an executive director with investment bank UBS, but was then a UBS trader in Sydney and an amateur jockey with significant racing connections.

In an effort to discredit John Hartman as a witness, Curtis's defence team released emails gathered by ASIC showing the pair planned to fix a horse race through a Betfair account and to bribe "a very high-profile jockey".

The two discussed paying the jockey $10,000 for a $100,000 win, after getting the all-clear at the fences that the race was fixed.

theaustralian.com.au  16 Nov 2013

They are the one of the few that have been 'caught', whereas the industry is littered with this type of criminal.

The Australian court system is quite literally a joke.

Corporate fraud and crime in Australia DOES pay and it pays well, on the proviso that you have the support of the system and of course the 'brotherhood'.

Another company involved in insider trading is ABN Amro.

James Packer’s business with a dodgy regime

So how do you go about gaining a casino licence from an increasingly dodgy government? Very carefully, no doubt.

No, not New South Wales, but Sri Lanka and the Philippines, countries where James Packer’s Crown either wants to or is building a casino.

Packer officially launched his $400 million Sri Lankan ambition overnight on the eve of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting with a pitch similar to the story that had the NSW government in his pocket as soon as Barry O’Farrell heard it – a promise of untold wealth flowing from international tourism. In Sri Lanka, it’s supposed to be millions of rich Indians wanting to fly in to give Crown money, while Sydney has been promised squadrons of Chinese whales. The model is Macau where Chinese gamblers pour across the border, an interesting percentage of them corrupt officials laundering money in some of the city’s many casinos.

Last weekend’s Economist magazine left Packer’s name out of it while detailing Sri Lanka’s problems ahead of CHOGM, but did mention:

“In a building near the beach, a casino operator sinks into a monstrous armchair and gushes about Colombo’s gambling potential. His planned venture with an Australian investor includes a 450-room “five-star-plus” hotel to lure high-rollers from China, India and the Gulf. For now, blank-eyed tourists make do in dreary halls, playing roulette under fluorescent lights. But he, like all the ruling elite, is in a rush.”

The ambitions of Sri Lanka becoming India’s Macau must be somewhere a little further in the future. Right now the Indian Prime Minister is snubbing his neighbour’s CHOGM – relations remain strained by Sri Lanka’s treatment of ethnic Tamils, never mind the suspected war crimes committed on civilians while crushing the Tamil Tigers. (The Canadian Prime Minister is boycotting the meeting because of Sri Lanka’s human rights record, the Australian Prime Minister is attending without any apparent reservations.)

As the Economist summarised it, since the mistake was made to hold CHOGM in Sri Lanka, the country has “drifted towards more authoritarian rule, dominated by a single family, led by Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president”. In other words, the Rajapaksa clan has turned government into a family business.

“The Rajapaksas’ ruling coalition, with a two-thirds majority in Parliament, tightens its grip,” reports the magazine. “It has pushed through constitutional changes—scrapping presidential term limits, and abolishing independent police and electoral commissions—to centralise power. Judicial restraint is weak, notably after the peremptory sacking of the country’s chief justice earlier this year.”

While the Rajapaksas deny there’s any corruption in the system, the Transparency International global corruption index has Sri Lanka coming in 79th out of 176 countries with a score of 40 out of 100, one rung above China. (Australia was 7th with a score of 85.)

“Since Sri Lanka has scored below 50, it is apparent that the country is yet among those who were unable to minimise the level of corruption in the public sector,” observes Transparency.

It could be worse – it could be the Philippines languishing in 105th place on 34.

Last year Wynn Resorts cited corruption as the main reason for rejecting repeated requests from its biggest shareholder, Kazuo Okada, to form a joint venture in the Philippines. The Wynn board accused Mr Okada of making improper payments to gambling regulators in the Philippines.

“The board’s move came after an internal investigation conducted by a former FBI director found him to be “unsuitable” based on the company’s internal regulations,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

But James Packer has declared his confidence in the integrity of the Philippines gaming market. His Melco Crown arm is in a joint venture with the Philippines’ richest man to build a billion dollar casino in Manila. In July he told the Australian’s Damon Kitney:

"At the end of the day (Genting chief executive) KT Lim is up there. The Singapore government has given this a tick from a probity sense. And Singapore has the toughest probity in the world. That gives me confidence," Mr Packer told The Australian.

"And we (Melco Crown) have 100 per cent management control. We know what we are doing and we are not doing anything differently to Australia or Macau."

Kitney reported that it was understood questions from regulators about the Philippines' gaming market were one of the factors that delayed Packer's Crown clearing probity in Sydney and Brisbane earlier this year and that casinos and internet gaming were excluded from tough new anti-money laundering laws at the request of the state regulator Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation because of concerns it may deter foreign investors.

Last month the AFR reported that the Philippines casino was being re-branded as City of Dreams Manila.

“The new City of Dreams will include mass market and VIP gaming facilities,” said the AFR.” As a result of negotiations with PAGCOR, the complex is expected to operate 365 gaming tables, 1680 slot machines and 1680 electronic table games. This is a significant increase on the 242 tables and 1450 machines and electronic table games combined, which were previously expected to be licensed.”

It was previously known as Belle Grande. Belle Corporation is Melco Crown’s joint venture partner, a subsidiary of SM Group which was founded by Henry Sy, ranked by Forbes as the Philippines’ richest man. Becoming and remaining the Philippines’ richest man must be an interesting process.

smh.com.au 15 Nov 2013
 
Another corrupt businessman put on the pedestal by the corrupt government and police.

Packer is involved in drug distribution worth millions of dollars annually a fact that the authorities are turning a blind eye to.
 
These people are part of the untouchable elite with full support of corrupt politicians, law makers, and police, including the taxation department.