AFP probe RBA-linked company allegations

Federal police have been called in to investigate allegations payments made by a company with links to the Reserve Bank of Australia may have been used to provide "kickbacks" to foreign government officials.

Banknote supplier Securency International Pty Ltd, in which the RBA is a shareholder, allegedly made a substantial number of commission payments to agents including some previously implicated in corruption scandals, Fairfax newspapers report.

Some of Securency's agents have been named in official corruption investigations in Africa and Asia, the report says, with at least one having a criminal conviction for fraud.

Fairfax said there were concerns that the company could be open to allegations that some commissions could be used to pay kickbacks to foreign officials.

The RBA on Saturday said Australian Federal Police had been asked to investigate.

"The board of Securency has referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police," a RBA statement said.

Speaking to reporters in Sydney on Saturday, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he understood the company was established in 1996.

"But I also note that the company has indicated that they're all matters to be shown to federal police."

Melbourne-based Securency is a joint venture between the RBA and British film manufacturer Innovia Films.

Securency manufactures a product called `guardian', a polymer material used in Australian bank notes as well as currency in 27 other countries around the world.

Securency said its agents had signed agreements forbidding payments to foreign officials and politicians, Fairfax reported.

aap 23 May 2009

DoCS took sister of starved girl: court

The Department of Community Services (DoCS) had already taken custody of a couple's youngest child before another daughter died, a jury has been told.

The parents are on trial in the NSW Supreme Court after their seven-year-old daughter was found dead at the family's Hawks Nest home, north of Newcastle, on November 3, 2007.

The court has previously heard the girl died from starvation. On Friday it was told DoCS had earlier removed an infant from the couple after it lost weight.

The married couple, a 47-year-old man and a 35-year-old woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, have pleaded not guilty to one count each of murder.

Giving evidence on Friday, DoCS officer Lauren Barker said she had been given the family's case file in early 2007.

She said she visited the family's home, then in the Sydney suburb of Matraville, with a colleague on April 20 that year.

Crown prosecutor Peter Barnett SC asked Ms Barker if the father had said to her: "We will leave the country before DoCS takes the children."

"Yes," Ms Barker said.

She agreed the father refused to allow her to speak to them, saying: "The children hate DoCS and refuse (to speak to you) after DoCS took their baby sister."

He also said to her: "I went to court 29 times. When our baby was removed it was all lies.

"They took her because she had lost 20 grams."

Mr Barnett said the father had also said: "(The baby) lost less than 20 grams of weight through wetting her nappy."

When the seven-year-old died, the couple also had two older daughters living with them.

A Department of Housing officer told the court the Sydney home had been infested by cockroaches.

Ms Alison Hillis went to the home on March 12 to meet the father because repairmen refused to enter the house due to its state of uncleanliness.

"(There were) cockroach infestations. The walls were filthy," Mrs Hillis told the jury.

"The stove was absolutely putrid, Beside the fridge cans and rubbish were piled up. It was just in an appalling state."

The jury also heard the NSW Education Department struggled to get the couple's children to attend school in Sydney, despite arranging transport for them.

Department home school liaison officer Gregurio Colubraile said he tried to have the now-dead child attend school and arranged transport for her after the father requested help.

"Did (the father) say he wanted the transport service?" Mr Barnett asked.

"Yes," Mr Colubraile said.

The next day, on June 20, 2006, Mr Colubraile returned to the home to say he had organised a school and transport for the child and she could start two days later.

Mr Barnett asked, did the father say: "You wouldn't believe it, there's a problem. This whole family is going to Queensland."

"Yes," Mr Colubraile said.

Meanwhile, documents presented to the trial show that the death of his daughter and the investigations by police and medical examiners barely interrupted the accused father's online gambling.

The court has heard the mother found the child dead in her bedroom around 7am on November 3 and the father woke "as usual" about 9.30am and went to his computer to check race scratchings.

He learned of the death around 11am before calling an ambulance about 1pm.

In court on Friday, Tabcorp customer account manager James Miller said he put together a report for police who had served a warrant for the information.

It covered a period from the afternoon of Thursday November 1 to Sunday, November 4.

It shows the father stopped punting just before ringing emergency services to report his daughter's death, but hopped online again shortly after police and medical examiners finished collecting evidence from the home in the early hours of November 4.

The transactions were:

November 1

2.01pm - $230 deposited into the account at Hawks Nest Golf Club.

November 2

8.34pm -$10 bet, 8.35pm -$10 bet

8.35pm -$12 and $30 credits for wins

8.36pm -$10 bet

November 3

9.49am - $5 bet, 9.51am - $15 bet

9.53am - $2 bet, 9.54am - $1 bet

10.31am -$9.30 and $24 credits for win

10.51am -$4 bet, 10.52am -$14 bet

10.53am -$6 bet

November 4

1.29am - $6 bet, 1.37am - $20 bet

1.51am - $10 bet

1.53am - $33 credit for win

2.41pm - $200 cash withdrawal from a retail outlet.

$113 wagered for a return of $108.30.

The trial before Justice Robert Allan Hulme, sitting in East Maitland, continues.

22 May 2009

Another EPIC Failure by the government.

The Government KNEW the other child was in danger.

Now all there is to do is a COVER UP to deny ANY BLAME from the government, as is standard practice.

The Headline should read:

Government kills child due to inaction.

About those Clare Werbeloff hoax rumours

Keeping the masses entertained.

The story of an illiterate Clare, has no doubt made its impact on the 'net.

See story on ninemsn: About those Clare Werbeloff rumours

Ninemsn was too gutless to publish the comments made by CoprAu.

Here is what they did not post:

This is real life, these are the streets, and Clare is just part of it. Take a video of a situation & people will read into it that you have a disturbed relationship with your neighbours dog.

There is NOTHING racist about what she said, it's just how she was capable of describing the situation at hand. All sorts make the world go 'round, so could we be asking too much of people?

VERY VERY Entertaining piece of footage to the the least, BUT it just shows how people have nothing better to do than to amuse themselves with such an event.

This has got NOTHING to do with conspiracy theories.

PS. The holocaust DID happen, and there are people still alive today that have also seen Poles, Czechs, Russians get slaughtered.

Casino Cheats Customers

In an interview with an ex-casino employee it was revealed that an Australian casino has instructed its staff to throw the ball in a particular manner to result in a more favourable outcome to the casino rather than the paying gambler.

Similarly like throwing a coin in the air, even though theoretically there is a 50/50 chance of either heads or tails landing, there is technique than can be employed to have a greater chance of a desired outcome.

If a gambler is aware of a more favourable means to increase their chances of success (winning), and the casino is made aware the gambler is then barred / banned from the premises.

Victorians gamble approx. $4,000,000,000 annually.

Notices in the casino premises indicate the the gambler ALWAYS loses.

Banks rake in $11 billion in fees

Australia's banks, which have been labeled the world’s most expensive, earned more than $11 billion in fees from customers last year, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA).

The RBA said the 18 banks included, which represent around 90 percent of the banking sector, raked in $11.6 billion in fees in 2008, an increase of $885 million in one year.

The banks charged households $4.8 billion in fees, while businesses were hit with $6.7 billion in fees.

For the first time, the RBA tracked ‘exception fees’ in its analysis. Exception fees are the charges that banks levy when a customer breaches the terms of a product - such as making a late payment or exceeding a credit limit.

The RBA found that banks charged customers $1.2 billion in exception fees - with the majority of charges relating to credit card and deposit accounts.

While the RBA data analysed 18 banks, it is believed that around half of the $11 billion charged in fees is attributable to the big four banks.

A report from Fujitsu Consulting released in March found that Australia's big four banks are among the most expensive in the world and revealed they will collect more than $5 billion in fees in the year ahead.

"We have some of the most expensive banking services in the western world," Fujitsu Consulting's Martin North said.

He added that while it was impossible to benchmark Australian fees against every country in the western world, they were probably the highest. "There are no countries that I've found that have higher fees," Mr North told ninemsn.

The research concluded that the average Australian household pays close to $1000 in fees each year, compared to $850 in the US and $749 in the UK.

According to Mr North, a lack of competition in the Australian market is allowing the banks to charge such large fees. He added that bank fees are not accurately alligned to the actual cost of the service.

Australian banks charge around 300 different fees.

money.ninemsn.com 21 May 2009

Sol slips quietly from country, $31m richer

IN leaving his position early former Telstra boss Sol Trujillo has increased his payout.

THE corporate brawling of his reign was played out in public, but former Telstra boss Sol Trujillo has slipped away from the company and the country very quietly.

He leaves behind thousands of bruised shareholders and takes with him an expected $31 million.

Not a bad earn for three years and 10 months work, but then that's the Sol Trujillo way, The Daily Telegraph reports.

The news was released yesterday, with the company saying chief executive-elect David Thodey had taken the top job at Australia's biggest telco following the return to the US of former CEO Mr Trujillo.

His departure was a month earlier than expected. Mr Trujillo flew out of Australia last Thursday, bound for his home in a ritzy gated estate in San Diego. The previous night he dined at Crown Casino, Melbourne, with his former executives and the ousted Telstra chairman Donald McGauchie. Maybe the consummate salesman decided it would be better to be out of Australia if his successor began laying blame for the company's problems at the feet of former management. Certainly negative publicity travels, and Mr Trujillo is facing a fierce battle back in the US to retain his seat on the board of retail giant Target.

There are investors stateside who apparently think 15 years on the board is long enough. Here in Australia it has been the opposite story. Mr Trujillo started on July 1, 2005, with a five-year vision to transform the moribund former government entity into a sleek paragon of modern telecommunications. Less than halfway through 2009 and he's gone. So what happened? Certainly his way of doing business rankled Down Under. He stacked the company with Americans perceived (??????) by some to be mates (THEY WERE MATES) . He was always at war with the regulators and the Government.

He cut more than 8000 jobs in three years and complaints surged almost 250 per cent.

And he earned huge sums of cash from shareholders but purchased almost no shares. When Telstra announced in February this year that Mr Trujillo intended to leave, the company said he would work until June 30. But by terminating his employment during the notice period, not only does Mr Trujillo bring to an early end what presently appears to be the biggest failure of his career, he also increases the size of his payout. That's because Telstra is obliged to pay him an additional $3 million severance if he leaves before he completed his notice period. "Our members are pretty angry that he has cut and run with an enormous pay packet," the Australian Shareholders Association's Stephen Matthews said yesterday.

"And he's left before the transformation has been completed, the transformation (then) chairman Donald Mcgauchie said Trujillo was brought in for." When he was in Australia, the workaholic divided his time between Sydney and Melbourne.

In Sydney he rented level 24 of The Georgia building in Kent Street. It is the only apartment on level 24 as The Georgia offers only entire-floor living. Such premium digs, though, are reserved for those sufficiently well paid to afford the $2500 to $3000 per week rents. Mr Trujillo presided over a 40 per cent decline in the share price and so alienated the Federal Government that last January it cut Telstra out of its national broadband initiative, effectively handing $2 billion in revenue to the company's rivals.

He inflated Telstra's net debt by 40 per cent to more than $16 billion, meaning shareholders now receive Telstra's famous dividend from borrowings as opposed to cash flows. -

The Daily Telegraph 20 May 2009 Full story here

In a deal that is ONLY catagorised as 'money for mates'. He does not leave anyone he was GIVEN this money.

A REAL underperformer that was rewarded at the expense of the public.

Telstra FRAUDULENTLY adds conversations to phone bills to pay for Mr. Solomons expenses.

This shows how in the corporate world if you have the connections you can rape the consumer.

Solomon did NOT do this by himself, he was help by his mates, Board of Directors, and the government. All these people LET him get away with it, so he could take the heat.

At the end of the the this is POLITICS at the top level of business which is supported by the law.

Couple charged with wedding-night murder

A pair of British newlyweds are accused of murder after a violent confrontation that occurred after the bride slept with another man on her wedding night.

Groom Barry Johnson and his new wife Wendy Shobrook allegedly beat George Auchterlonie to death after he spent the night with the bride, a court has heard.

Ms Shobrook, 39, had allegedly walked out on her 40-year-old husband just hours after the service because she believed he was not paying her enough attention. He had left the reception to pick up his welfare (as you do... someone has to pay for the bar tab) from a nearby unemployment centre.

The couple then had an argument at home that resulted in Ms Shobrook setting fire to Mr Johnson's bed and then allegedly running into the arms of Mr Auchterlonie.

But the following morning she phoned her husband and claimed his 45-year-old Auchterlonie tried to rape her, the court heard.

Ms Shobrook then allegedly let Mr Johnson into his love rival's flat where he savagely beat the father of four with an oar and a glass.

Both newlyweds reportedly took part in the beating that left the Plymouth man with 38 separate injuries.

He was left lying in a pool of his own blood and was not seen again until his dead body was discovered three days later.

"I kicked hell out of him and broke a glass over his head. There was claret everywhere. I gave him a bloody good hiding," Johnson allegedly boasted to friends, the Daily Mail reports.

The prosecution claims that Ms Shobrook deliberately set up her lover for the beating by concocting a rape story (a nice and easy fairy tale to believe) and allowing her husband access to the victim's home in June last year.

They alleged that she had been involved in a sexual relationship for a period leading up to their spur-of-the-moment wedding, which took place at a register office in front of three friends.

ninemsn 20 May 2009

Real life stories, of how trailer park trash lives and later breeds.

What hope have their children.

Pollies cashing in on living allowance

Federal politicians who own homes in Canberra are claiming thousands of dollars in travel expenses during sitting weeks of parliament.

Taxpayers are paying for daily accommodation expenses of up to $215 claimed by politicians who are staying at their own residence, News Limited reports.

The practice is not illegal and at least one in five parliamentarians is cashing in.

Should the practice be illegal? Share your thoughts on these revelations below.

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard bought a property in Kingston in March of last year but claimed the travel allowance for 44 days, totalling $8,536.

The wife of Resources and Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson owns a house in Florey, which he uses as his residence when staying in the capital.

In the first six months of 2008, he claimed the travel allowance for 75 days in Canberra, receiving $14,550 in taxpayer dollars.

During the same period, Small Business Minister Craig Emerson claimed nearly $11,000 in travel allowances while he was staying in Canberra.

aap 20 May 2009

Plain and simple, FRAUD.

If you defraud the government in the SAME manner you WILL be charged and have to pay back the monies stolen.

These people are ABOVE the law, and will NOT be charged.

A 'LOOPHOLE' is a law that is specifically designed for the people 'in the know' to be taken advantage of.

Mel Gibson's girlfriend pregnant

It has been confirmed Mel Gibson’s Russian girlfriend is pregnant – and a wedding may not be far behind.

Following reports that singer Oksana Grigorieva is pregnant with Gibson’s eighth child, a representative for the actor suggested people “stay tuned” for wedding plans to E! Online.

Grigorieva is in her second trimester, TMZ.com reported today, quoting an unnamed source.

Rumours the Russian musician was pregnant circulated last month just weeks after Gibson's wife of 28 years, Robyn Moore, filed for divorce.

The Gibsons had reportedly split two years ago but kept details of their separation quiet until Gibson was photographed kissing Grigorieva, 39, on a beach in Costa Rica.

Moore filed for divorce in April, and Gibson has reportedly told her about the pregnancy.

Grigorieva, who is a singer signed to Gibson’s record label Icon, has an 11-year-old son to former James Bond star Timothy Dalton.

Gibson stepped out in public with Grigorieva for the first time at the premiere of Hugh Jackman's X-Men Origins: Wolverine in Los Angeles last month.

Property records show she has been living at Gibson's property in Sherman Oaks, California, which he bought last December.

She reportedly moved there from a house bought by her songwriter ex-boyfriend David Foster.

19 May 2009

An occupational Ho, or just gene shopping ?

Only time will tell, BUT history show with this one, that she chooses her targets well.

Steve Austin (Lee Majors) aka The Six Million Dollar Man will have nothing on Mel if the reported payments are to go through on Mel's divorce of a 600 Million Dollar payout.

Telstra Dome for $25

When you're in the big league, you have mates in all right places. Bankers, Realtors, Politicians, Lawyers, etc are part of your extended circle of friends.

From the archives within, the AFL (Australian Football League), leases one of the football world's stadiums for an astounding TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS (AUD $25) per year.

That's right, in a deal that is nothing more and nothing less than a money for mates transaction, the saving is NOT passed on to the general public, but rather ticket sales are at a premium cost.

Tests reveal father of 'Alfie's baby'

A 15-year-old boy has been revealed as the biological father of baby Maisie Roxanne, the child that "Britain's youngest dad" Alfie Patten had claimed as his own.

DNA test proved two months ago that baby-faced Alfie, who is 13 years old, is not the father — despite Maisie's 15-year-old mother, Chantelle Stedman, insisting otherwise The Sun newspaper reports.

The newspaper has now named schoolboy Tyler Barker, who lives on the same East Sussex estate as Chantelle, as the real father following a $640 paternity test arranged by social services.

Alfie is said to be devastated and "extremely distressed" by the test results.

After the world first heard of Alfie and his incredible story, six local boys stepped forward claiming to have fathered Maisie.

But Chantelle was adamant she lost her virginity to the 121cm-tall boy, who appeared as a doting father.

Tyler, whose family has claimed he is the real father since Maisie was born in February, says he had unprotected sex with Chantelle just once when he was 14.

He claims Chantelle told him she would take the morning after-pill.

"I thought she'd take care of it," he said at the time.

Just after Maisie's birth, Tyler's dad said his son had broken down in tears at the thought of becoming a father.

"He thinks his life has been ruined by this," Chris Ireland said.

Chantelle, whose family has gone into hiding, is now hoping to go back to school for one day a week.

It is expected that her mother Penny, who has six kids herself, will help raise Maisie.

aap 19 May 2009

Posted purely for entertainment reasons, and nothing else, as at the end of the day Trailer Park Trash has the right to breed as well.

The mass media deliberately omits the following fact:

The Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000 thus equalised the age of consent at 16 for all sexual acts (including, for the first time, lesbian acts).

She had sex before the age a 16, therefore a CRIME has been committed.