Under suppression orders lifted today it can be revealed that the nation's banknote printer Note Printing Australia (NPA) and its polymer material supplier Securency were fined a massive $21.6m in 2012 for criminal conduct.
The two Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) companies had pled guilty to bribing foreign officials in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam to win lucrative banknote printing contracts.
The suppression order was lifted after the final player in the drama, Christian Boillot, this week pleaded guilty to his role in the scandal.
Despite the massive fine it has emerged that no directors of NPA or Securency, including former senior RBA officials, were ever investigated by ASIC.
In a statement this morning the RBA said the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions accepted that the boards of Securency and NPA had no involvement in, or knowledge of, the bribery.
In addition to Boillot several other people entered guilty pleas to bribery or false accounting offences. They included former Securency managing director Myles Curtis, former sales executive Cliff Gerathy, former finance head John Ellery and former Indonesian agent Radius Christanto.
However despite the guilty pleas no-one has been been sentenced, the crimes committed can attract sentences of up to a decade. The Age reports that the case has been dogged by blunders and irregularities by the authorities trying to deal with the complex foreign bribery laws.
Two years ago former Securency sales manager Peter Chapman was sentenced to 30 months in jail by a UK judge for for bribing an official at the Nigerian mint in order to win a $47m polymer order.
The RBA has since shed its 50 per cent stake in Securency, but still owns Note Printing Australia, which successfully prints polymer banknotes for various governments around the world.