and the “devastating attachments” in his appearance
before the corrupt Martin Inquiry. Days later, Steven Martin, the head of
that committee, told economists in Melbourne that “McLean’s allegations
are outrageous and he has provided no evidence.”
Paul McLean personally confronted
Stephen Martin about this shameless lie. He admitted to McLean that
neither he nor any member of his committee had yet looked at any of the
3,000 pages of evidence that had been provided. That was in March 1991. A
year later the committee refused to release any of the material tabled by
McLean. But that evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the banks is still
available and is being made public again.
McLean called for his resignation but soon Keating
promoted Martin to the office of Speaker of the House.
These documents were sent to Prime Minister Hawke,
Treasurer Keating, Attorney General Duffy, Opposition Leader John Hewson,
and all senators. After a historic confrontation with the President of the
Senate, Kerry Sibra, McLean had tabled the WestPac Letters with the
“devastating attachments” in the Senate making them property of the Senate
and therefore of the Australian government.
Hewson had had his chief of staff, Duncan Fairweather
send a letter to McLean saying, “This material has not been requested by
Dr. Hewson and I return it to you unopened.” In fact the material had
been opened and clumsily resealed with tape.
Senator McLean had not sought the letters either, but
responded to the responsibility to do his duty as a federal Senator.
The Attorney General advised that the “devastating
attachments” to the WestPac Letters had not been sought or examined by his
department. Knowing that the evidence existed but refusing to seek or
examine it was misprision of a felony and the Attorney General became an
accessory to the criminal fraud of the bank.
The Martin Committee had referred the WestPac
Letters without the “devastating attachments” to the National Crime
Authority. Lacking the evidence, the NCA found no relevant criminal
activity and no subsequent inquiries were taken. Similarly, the Director
of Public Prosecution avoided the evidence in stating that no offense
against the Commonwealth had been found.
The Attorney General’s office referred the
WestPac Letters without the “devastating attachments” to the
Australian Federal Police so the AFP could see not evil, either. The AG’s
office then sent the WestPac Letters to the New South Wales Police Service
and the Victorian Police.. without the “devastating attachments”.
The claim had been made that the “devastating attachments” to the WestPac
Letters had never come into the possession of the government. But, of
course, they had. The Martin Inquiry had made sure they would not see the
light of day.
In 1993, Senator McLean wrote to Bernie Fraser,
Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia,
The licence to be a Banker
carries with it profound obligations. No others hold such power. This
trust has more than once been abused in Australia recently.
I therefore on behalf of
many others, call on you and your board to accept and conscientiously
examine the clear evidence available. Should such evidence so demand, then
some Australian banks must in the public interest be deprived of their
licences and appropriate authorities be directed to determine if and where
criminal charges should be laid.
Sir, I have no choice in
either law or conscience but to advise you of all this and to ask that I
and two colleagues, John McLennan (former banker) and James Renton
(Lawyer), be allowed to present such prima facie evidence to you and/or
the Board of the Reserve Bank as we believe will substantiate the serious
allegations I have made.
The reply from Bernie Fraser ten days later was
brief:
In the circumstances, and in
the absence of any hard evidence of specific wrongdoings by individual
banks, I do not believe that discussions between us would serve any useful
purpose.
On 2 April, Senator McLean wrote to Bernie Fraser,
Your dismissiveness … is
superficial in the extreme. Indeed it begs the whole question of my
letter, which was to offer to present hard evidence to you in a
face to face situation.
I am forced to the
conclusion that you Sir, who together with others in “responsible public
office” are supposedly our collective conscience, do not want to see “hard
evidence” because it will (and indeed does) place upon you demands for
action.
Silence.
Recently, Paul McLean, fresh from his self-exile to
the forests of Tasmania, wrote,
I called for Keating to sack
him. But naturally Fraser needed do nothing more than laugh. He and all
his subordinate bankers got away with whatever they wanted because of the
extra-ordinary moral ineptitude of the responsible ministers and
opposition leaders of the day. Hewson was a banker prior to becoming a
politician, and is again now.
Towards the end of my
involvement in all this, I sought the support of a personal friend, Ted
Pickering, then Minister for Police in NSW. I knew that the fraud revealed
in the ‘Westpac Letters’ had landed finally on his desk. Others had
skirted their responsibilities and the matter finished with his NSW Fraud
Squad. He smiled and in his inimitable frankness said…” Paul, no
government of either political colour, will ever seriously take on the top
end of town.”
Paul Keating as Treasurer seemed keen to know what
was happening on the floor of the WestPac Forex venture and called several
times a day, according to one witness. Another witness noted that he and
Hawke probably got a share of the commission from the New Zealand bank
that had profited from the WestPac losses. A few years later, Chan, who
was running the trading floor for the Foreign Currency Loans at WestPac
moved to New Zealand to work directly for his banking partner in crime
there. Parliament covered up the fraud and refused to even look at the
evidence. The Reserve Bank shied from its responsibility knowing it could
do so with impunity. All might be guilty of misprision of felony and
accessories of criminal fraud.
Then there are the courts…
