AWB must hand over documents

[TOM4CWB]

Mallee,

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200609/s1743169.htm

"AWB to hand over hundreds of documents


The oil-for-food Inquiry is now free to complete its hearings after a Federal Court ruling that AWB will have to hand over a large amount of material it had withheld.

The court says AWB will be able to keep secret less than half the material it wanted to keep from the Cole inquiry into sanction-breaking kickbacks paid to the regime of Saddam Hussein.

AWB originally claimed that 1,450 folders were protected legal material.

But Justice Neil Young today ruled that AWB lost its legal privilege over more than 300 documents because it used legal advice to declare its innocence to the Australian Government and UN investigators.

"AWB claimed that there was no evidence of any corruption by AWB, any side payments or after sales payments by AWB to the former Iraqi regime," he said.

Justice Young also ruled that material about a contract, which was inflated to pay a debt to the Iraqi government, will be handed over.

He says communication between a client and lawyer which facilitates a crime is not protected."

We may just get to the bottom of this yet!

All the best Mallee!

[TOM4CWB]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/paper-chase-shows-awb-should-have-cooperated-a-long-time-ago/2006/09/18/1158431644247.html

Paper chase shows AWB should have co-operated a long time ago
David Marr
September 19, 2006

ANALYSIS

"AWB's instincts for slogging it out have once again proved a disaster for the nation's monopoly wheat trader. The Federal Court has demolished extravagant claims the company has been running all year for withholding documents from the Cole inquiry.

The message is simple: AWB should have co-operated all along.

What brought AWB undone were the briefings executives made as the kickback scandal threatened to engulf the company. From early last year executives were telling Federal Government ministers, public servants, ambassadors, the UN inquiry and finally Terence Cole, QC, himself that AWB had "independent legal advice" that there was "absolutely no evidence" of any wrongdoing.

The gist of Justice Neil Young's ruling yesterday was this: if you're going to use the advice to tout your innocence to the world, you also have to show it to Cole, along with all the investigations, the interviews and internal inquiries that fed into its preparation.

Justice Young was not applying any fresh rule of law. There was nothing novel in his approach. AWB's high-powered team of Melbourne lawyers - several QCs plus three firms of solicitors: Blakes, Minter Ellison and Arnold Bloch Leibler - must have been advising AWB that in the end hundreds of documents would have to be handed over to Cole.

AWB fought all the way to yesterday. After paying a few more millions in legal fees, the company won a little time and kept Cole from seeing some hundreds of documents he was never going to be allowed to use. But hundreds more must now be handed to him. They could have been delivered last December.

Yesterday Justice Young lifted the curtain on that so-far-unseen legal advice. Richard Tracey, QC, who has recently been appointed to the Federal Court, was the key lawyer who told AWB in May 2004 that on the material shown to him there was "no evidence" of sanctions busting.

Tracey stuck to his guns despite "misgivings" later that year and having "reason to suspect" that trucking fees paid by AWB were being "used as a kickback" to the Iraqi Grains Board. Though he advised AWB to make further investigations, his advice allowed the wheat trader to go on citing independent support for its claim that there was "absolutely no evidence" the company's money ever reached Saddam's regime.

The court's decision gives Cole a chance to conduct a very rare public examination of the work of some of the country's leading lawyers - not just those big end of town firms and the man who is now Mr Justice Tracey, but also retired High Court judge Sir Anthony Mason and a leading US authority on sanctions law Professor David Wippman.

All sprinkled holy water over AWB's dealings with Saddam Hussein's regime. But the question is: what documents did they see? What did AWB tell them? The lesson of the company's long-dragged-out slugfest with the Cole inquiry is that it only tells what it wants to tell unless someone like Neil Young of the Federal Court forces them to deliver.

AWB says it's not going to appeal. That doesn't mean it's over. Not by a long shot."

[TOM4CWB]

Mallee;

If the AWB decieved everyone on Iraq... and were as close to perfect deceptionists as is possible... what can this say about the single desk?

Is this why the AWB is so painfully reluctant to admit...

Simply because the whole deck of cards falls down... once the truth is exposed!

DOesn't this flow straight to the single desk argument... and the reason they so strongly defended a deception...

Because it is a well worn habit... developed in the defence of the "SIngle Desk"?

Is this why the CWB will not come clean on AWB involvement in CWB exports to Iraq during the same time period?

Both the AWB and CWB are locked into a deception they cannot continue.

In the end... shouldn't Canadian and Ausie wheat and barley growers form a strategic alliance... inviting as many other global producers to join as would... wouldn't this be a much more effective marketing system than the AWB and CWB provide now?

Hope you get some rain Mallee!

[malleefarmer]

one has to be careful what is said but maybe there is a possibility of serious criminal charges.
Shoul;d the CWB be sweating or are they squeaky clean in terms of corporate governance and dealings.....