[Peetwo]

Trough feeders, international fraud, kickbacks & Mandarins?


Sometimes 'Old Man Time' can play some masterful tricks & treats, here is a perfect example.

On the Truss shame thread the Ferryman had an excellent Sundy Ramble question - The power behind the throne. - with the subjects of interest being M&M & Doc Hoodoo Voodoo...

..Careful research and tracking through many events invariably finds both men involved; always in control, one way or another.  It leads to the notion that the iron ring is attached to the solid bulwark of the real power and influence behind the thrones. And begs the question – just who really runs the puppet show?  No brainer in my opinion, proving it; aye well, that’s the challenge ain’t it.  Will Truss meet it? – another no brainer...

  
And then last night we had a very damning story on the 'other' Aunty news that gave me pause to reflect on some parallel universe zingers - think Pumpkin, Hoodoo, Skulls & ICAO... :

Leading lawyers call for overhaul of Australia's foreign bribery laws

By the National Reporting Team's James Thomas

Updated yesterday at 3:34pmSun 6 Sep 2015, 3:34pm


Photo: The Government spent $23.4 million investigating the AWB scandal, which resulted in no criminal prosecutions. (Will Ockenden: ABC Rural)

The world's leading lawyers have questioned the ability of the Australian Federal Police to investigate serious corporate crime and called for a new "dedicated agency" to have responsibility for complex financial cases, including foreign bribery.

In a damning submission to the Senate, the International Bar Association (IBA) described Australia's foreign bribery laws as ineffective and our record of enforcement "woeful".

"We have had 15 years of foreign bribery laws in Australia," wrote Robert Wyld, author of the submission.

He said in that time there had been 28 investigations, although 21 of those were dropped and only two were criminal prosecutions.

"The system is not working. Unless people go to jail, unless people see imprisonment as the real ultimate penalty, there will be no behavioural change," Mr Wyld said.

While acknowledging the 2014 improvements of the AFP's Fraud and Anti-Corruption Centre, Mr Wyld, who is co-chair of the IBA's Anti-Corruption Committee, described Australia as a "reactive country, sensitive to external criticism and forced to budget better resources only when it must".

The Australian Wheat Board became embroiled in a kickback scandal more than 10 years ago which saw $300 million funnelled through to the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The Federal Government spent $23.4 million investigating the scandal, which resulted in no criminal prosecutions.

If you want your company to pay bribes, just set up a subsidiary and ensure whatever structure you use is isolated.
Robert Wyld

By way of contrast in the United States, BHP paid $US25 million to settle bribery charges for offering junkets to the 2008 Beijing Olympics for 176 officials that, it was alleged, could help them.

The AFP launched an investigation in 2013 but Mr Wyld said it went nowhere.
"BHP has not been prosecuted for that conduct in Australia," he said.
Unlike the US, Australia has no liability on parent companies for the conduct of subsidiaries or intermediaries.

"If you want your company to pay bribes, just set up a subsidiary and ensure whatever structure you use is isolated, in terms of effective management from the parent company," Mr Wyld said.

The 2015 Deloitte Bribery and Corruption Survey found 23 per cent of Australian organisations with offshore operations are not concerned about the risks arising from non-compliance with bribery laws.

About 77 per cent have also never conducted a bribery risk assessment.

Experts call for banning of facilitation payments

The IBA wants to see civil and criminal penalties for corruption and foreign bribery increased and the banning of so-called facilitation payments — small amounts of cash handed to officials to get things done which are presently legal under Australian foreign bribery law.

"They are bribes. They are small amounts but they are still bribes," said Transparency International's executive director Mike Ahrens.

If facilitation payments were banned, it would make it much more difficult to operate in Africa.
Bill Turner, Australia-Africa Mining Industry Group

Mr Ahrens is campaigning to rid facilitation payments as a defence under our foreign bribery laws — a position the UK government has adopted and one which is supported by the massive miner Woodside.

But there are some that insist facilitation payments are not bribes but a necessary part of doing business in some countries.

"If facilitation payments were banned, it would make it much more difficult to operate in Africa", said the Australia-Africa Mining Industry Group's Bill Turner.

"A policeman will pull you up at a roadblock, you wind the window down and he will poke an AK-47 through the window.

"It is a little bit difficult to argue the case about not being able to make a facilitation payment under such circumstances."

World Bank estimated corruption cost $US1 trillion annually

Mr Wyld said that such payments are nothing more than "grease payments".

"That is not a facilitation payment, that is a worker who is being extorted," he said.

"That would be a justifiable and reasonable thing to do and the person would have the defence of making a payment under duress."

But otherwise, Mr Wyld said facilitation payments were nothing more than "small bribes".
"How can you be half-pregnant? You don't half pay a bribe," he said.

"[The banning of these payments in the UK] has not put United Kingdom companies out of business, they are still operating in the markets where Bill's clients work," he added.
The World Bank estimated in 2005 that corruption cost $US1 trillion annually.

With figures like that, the OECD's CleanGovBiz report argued: "It is not only a question of ethics; we simply cannot afford such waste."

The Senate Economics Reference Committee's inquiry into foreign bribery laws is yet to conduct hearings and is due to report its findings on July 1 next year.

 
Here we go from the mothballed thread - McComic in Montreal:

Did Australia mislead ICAO over the Pel-Air crash?
 
Ben Sandilands @ Plane Talking - the best of all tendentious bloggers asks one of the many big questions.   It beggars belief that after the unholy mess McComic left behind in Australia; the only support group for his ICAO appointment is the Department of murky Machiavellian land deals, manipulation, influence peddling and obfuscation.  
 
I will reiterate, the Senate Pel-Air inquiry only exposed the tip of a very ugly, sinister ice berg.  The DoIT, under Merdek running both the CASA and ATSB top dogs has successfully smothered and minimised the impact not only the damning FAA audits of CASA, the Senate inquiry recommendation, the Ministerial review recommendations and the Canadian TSBC peer review recommendations, but have also managed to beat off a once furious, hostile industry with endless delays, meaningless promises and no bloody action whatsoever.  This all before the multitude of Coronial recommendations which have been fobbed off with 'promised changes or simply ignored are examined; or, the disgraceful ATSB reports into fatal accidents.  Let's just not mention the non reporting of loss of separation incidents or non publication of Safety Recommendations, Mildura or Air North; etc. etc. etc....
 
The human face of the incredible damage whether inflicted by designed intent or as happenstance provides a long list of those persons or companies who have been sacrificed to meet those predetermined outcomes, requested or required, under the McComic rule of 'black letter law', extruded by the mile, cut off as needed and welded to suit. 
 
The faithfully and caringly tended Senate Inquiry thread on the unspeakable Pprune carries the whole ugly story and would have brought these future revelations to the aviation world, had it not been pre-emptively shut down.  Boring they said (1, 600, 000 views); well, we can now let the world decide exactly how boring it was.   I suggest the doyens of the ICAO do their homework before allowing the McComic to plonk his fat bottom on one of their plush seats and embarrass them all further.  Seriously – start – at page 1 and don't speak until you have read the entire disgusting saga.   –HERE - Off you go...Shoo little mice..
 
The sketchy track record of playing fast and loose with ICAO protocols is not mentioned, that's all of' em.  Australia has over 1600, registered differences which, rather cleverly, make it 'technically' compliant with ICAO, while thumbing it's nose and laughing up it's sleeve.   Then there is the demonstrated complete disregard for ICAO Annex 13 and the allegations of breaches of the Transport Safety Acts to be accounted for, either proven of eliminated.
 
IMO: Not only is the Australian public been defrauded, the politicians bluffed and ill advised but the breathtaking arrogance with which the Iron Ring takes the Mickey Bliss out the world at large while being paid handsomely for doing it, simply beggars belief. 
 
No children, not cynical, just well researched, experienced and very disappointed, that I must, as an Australian hang my head in shame.  Shamed that this industry has allowed it 'self be so so gulled and beaten into a passive, Pavlovian response of accepting what the bullies, the ignorant and the despicable dole out.
 
No doubt there will be more on this, but meanwhile, if you love a really juicy scandal; and, want to enjoy this one: get your homework done.
 
Selah. 

 
Fortunately that M&M scheme - like the FIFA World Cup bid - come to nought:

Somewhere far..far..away but not far from this Star Chamber...

 

...in some Australian taxpayer funded ***** hotel McComic is cleared for take off:

 

Finally a return to Reason in the world of aviation safety has occurred and called BOLLOCKS to Murky & the former Minister for Bad Teeth & No Aviation's glowing endorsements of McComic.. :

Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler) (09:20): ...I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to John McCormick. John McCormick did an outstanding job. He was someone who was recruited after an international search for the best person. He brought decades of experience, not just in the Australian aviation industry but also particularly in Hong Kong, for Cathay Pacific, and in the international sector. I think he provided a rigour that was needed at the time. When John McCormick made the decision to ground Tiger Airways, that decision to ground an RPT service for the first—and hopefully the last—time in Australia's history was not only a courageous step but one that was entirely appropriate and needed. When Mr McCormick had advised me of the decision, I remember speaking to Prime Minister Gillard and informing her of what was about to occur—because, by definition, you cannot make a decision that an airline is unsafe and then say, 'we will ground them in a couple of days' time'. What it meant by definition was that people got stranded. There was a real-world impact on the travelling public, particularly given the nature of Tiger; and on many families who were able to travel by air for the first time, because it was a budget airline. That was a courageous decision by John McCormick.

 
From Reuters out of Toronto:

U.N. aviation agency names Chinese veteran as secretary general


TORONTO (Reuters) - The United Nations aviation body's governing council elected Fang Liu, a veteran of China's aviation authority, as its new secretary general on Wednesday, the first woman to hold the position in the agency's 70-year history.

Liu, who has worked at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) since 2007, is director of its Bureau of Administration and Services. She ran against candidates from Australia, India and the United Arab Emirates.

Liu will start her three-year term on Aug. 1, replacing Raymond Benjamin of France.

ICAO's Secretary General oversees the Montreal-based agency's secretariat, acting as its chief executive officer, and reports to its 36-member governing council which is currently led by Nigeria's Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu.

From 1987 to 2007, Liu held a series of positions at the Civil Aviation Administration of China's international affairs department, which works with ICAO.

The agency is under pressure to improve safety in the airline industry after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and the downing of another Malaysian airliner in Ukraine last year.

At a major safety conference last month ICAO member states endorsed a plan to track aircraft flying outside radar, and a proposal to build a website where states can share information about risks to planes in conflict zones.

The agency is not a regulator, but its standards typically become regulatory requirements in its 191 member states.

(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Diane Craft)

 
Wise move ICAO..  

MTF...

Ps Q/ In light of some of the disturbing findings in the latest MH370 interim investigation report I wonder how long it will be before a full blown ICAO USOAP safety audit is conducted in Malaysia?

Hmm..I'd still be curious to know how much the Murky instigated failed bid actually cost and how much it is currently costing us to keep the ICAO USOAP, FAA audit crew from knocking on the Murky Mandarin's door??

Period of interest:

   
MTF...P2

Ps Oh Nancy 'where out thou'??