Turnbull's energy project lead contractor under corruption cloud   

12 April 2018
Sydney Morning Herald


The chairman and several top executives of the lead contractor on the Government's Snowy 2.0 project are under federal police investigation for covering up alleged financial crime.

In February, the federal police raided the Snowy Mountain Engineering Corporation (SMEC) over suspicions that SMEC Holdings chairman Max Findlay, recently departed chief executive Andrew Goodwin and several still-serving top executives were involved in an an ongoing criminal conspiracy to cover up international graft.




A subsidiary company, SMEC Australia, was hired by the government in May 2017 to perform the major $29 million feasibility contract on the initial phase of Malcolm Turnbull's signature Snowy 2.0 project.

The company won the work even though SMEC's overseas operations were facing an earlier and still ongoing federal police inquiry for paying bribes or engaging in other financial crimes overseas.

The latest federal police investigation targets several senior Australian company figures who are suspected of engaging in an alleged conspiracy to thwart the earlier federal police probe.


Energy minister Josh Frydenberg said the government had been told the federal police probe was “in no way” related to SMEC’s work on the Snowy 2.0 project, saying the subsidiary that won that work was "a separate company".

However, there is a clear corporate relationship between the parent company, SMEC Holdings, and its subsidiary SMEC Australia, which won the Snowy 2.0 work, and some of the individuals being investigated by the federal police. The AFP search warrant identifies as an investigation target Mr Goodwin, who was both the chief executive of SMEC Holdings and a director of SMEC Australia at the time it secured the Snowy 2.0 contract.

Mr Goodwin hosted Mr Turnbull at a Snowy 2.0 press conference last year. Through his lawyer, Mr Goodwin has denied any wrongdoing.

Labor, which is planning to push the Coalition to strengthen Australia’s anti-corporate crime regime, said the Turnbull government needed to answer questions about the decision to hire and retain SMEC.

"These allegations are incredibly serious. A competent government would have made inquiries, and taken necessary action, to ensure that allegations of criminal wrongdoing will not affect this project," said Labor's justice spokeswoman, Clare O'Neil.

"The Minister must explain how he has satisfied this responsibility."   

There are two alleged criminal conspiracies detailed in confidential search warrants that were executed in February and obtained by Fairfax Media. Mr Goodwin is named a suspect in both.

The first involves a claim that a small number of Australian SMEC directors and executives are involved in a plot beginning in April 1, 2016 and still continuing. This conspiracy involves alleged accounting fraud to conceal from investigators financial crime involving an engineering and design water infrastructure contract in India.

SMEC’s chairman Max Findlay, who was overseeing SMEC's parent company, headquartered in Melbourne, when SMEC Australia won the Snowy 2.0 feasibility project, is also named in the AFP warrant as a suspect in the ongoing alleged accounting conspiracy.

The other businessmen named in the warrant are former SMEC Australia director Alastair McKendrick and senior executives George Lasek, Sri Kishen Dhar, Ankur Charagi and Raj Kumar.

The second set of allegations detailed in the AFP search warrant involve Mr Goodwin, SMEC’s company secretary Charles Wilcox, Mr Dhar and retired director Barry Norman.


The four men are suspected of involvement in a conspiracy that occurred between April 2015 and 28 August 2016 to “defeat justice”. This alleged conspiracy relates to efforts to stymie bribery investigations relating to a project in Bangladesh.

Other than those named in the warrants, no other SMEC figures are suspected of any wrongdoing by police.

No charges have been laid as a result of the inquiry linked to the recent raids or the ongoing 2015 inquiry. A magistrate signed off on the AFP search warrants in February after being satisfied police had “reasonable grounds” to suspect the businessmen named in the warrant were involved in alleged criminal behaviour.
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This judicial oversight process involves an AFP agent signing a confidential affidavit outlining the evidence the police have gathered to form their “reasonable” belief.

The "reasonable grounds" standard of proof needed to get a search warrant is far less than that required to launch a prosecution, which must then prove a case beyond reasonable doubt. 

The usual storm in a teacup by the Lefty red rag. And Polly Waffle does a bit of spamming.

macman wrote on Apr 12^th, 2018 at 12:07pm:


You are applying a (high) standard to the coalition.