Monday 24 July 2023

NACC for me - Peter Dutton and offshore concetration camps

 look at the NACC form -Q12 and Q13 is where the info is.


Q12

The Morrison government continued to pay millions of taxpayer dollars to a businessman convicted of corruption to provide offshore processing services on Nauru, even after he had pleaded guilty to bribing Nauruan government officials.  Mr Dutton was Minister responsible for paying that money.

In August 2020 Mozammil Gulamabbas Bhojani was convicted of paying more than $120,000 in bribes to two Nauruan government officials, including an MP and government minister, for favourable deals on phosphate mining contracts for his Radiance International group of companies.

The AFP revealed the timing of the briefing for Dutton in newly tabled answers to Senate questions on notice.  The AFP were asked when it had told Dutton it was investigating Bhojani and Radiance International for foreign bribery, the AFP said: “The AFP acting commissioner provided a verbal briefing on the investigation to the then minister for home affairs on or around 12 July 2018.”

In answers to related questions on notice, the current minister, Clare O’Neil, confirmed that the Department of Home Affairs and Radiance International Inc entered into several contracts for accommodation leases on Nauru, including one for Anabar Pond that “commenced on 14 August 2018”.

The copy of the contract – also tabled in parliament – shows it was signed by Bhojani and a senior official of the Department of Home Affairs on that date – which is about a month after the AFP briefing to Dutton.   Radiance International group owned an accommodation block – the Budapest Hotel – in Anabar, in Nauru’s north, which Bhojani’s company was leasing to the Australian government for its offshore processing regime on Nauru.

The Radiance International contract for refugee “accommodation services” – worth $17.5m – continued to be paid until May 2022, nearly two years after Bhojani was convicted and handed a suspended jail sentence for the foreign bribery offences in the same country.

The initial value of the Anabar Pond contract was to be up to $933,300, but with options for extensions.

Given that the Anabar Pond contract was extended nine times – mostly under the Coalition but also under the Labor government – the total value of that contract reached $9.26m by 30 June 2023.

 

 

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Q13

 

Confirming and paying for government contracts when it was known the prime recipient was under investigation for, and then convicted of bribing members of Nauru government where the Australian government contracts applied has to be corruption.

A convicted criminal benefited from the Australian government because an Australian government minister- Mr Dutton, knew there were problems  with the recipient but went ahead with it anyway.

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