August 5, 2023
The Australian Federal Police have admitted providing wrong information to a Senate committee, conceding Peter Dutton was not briefed on specific details about a foreign bribery investigation into an Australian businessman whose company was later awarded multimillion-dollar detention centre contracts.
Senior AFP officer Neil Gaughan told a Senate estimates hearing on Friday that the answer police provided to a question on notice about Mr Dutton’s knowledge of an investigation into Mozammil Bhojani was incorrect.
Mr Dutton this week insisted he had never been briefed on Mr Bhojani or his company Radiance International in 2018 when he was home affairs minister. He said he personally had no recollection of such a briefing and a check of his office records found no reference to it.
Mr Dutton added that as minister, he had no responsibility for contractual decisions and was happy to co-sign a referral with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to the National Anti-Corruption Commission that looked at contracting going back to 2012.
A front-page article in The Sydney Morning Herald was published last week based on the AFP’s written answer to Parliament’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee that: “The AFP acting Commissioner provided a verbal briefing on the investigation to the then Minister for Home Affairs on or around 12 July 2018.”
At the time, Mr Bhojani was under investigation for paying bribes to politicians in Nauru. A month later his company Radiance International was awarded a contract by the Home Affairs Department to provide accommodation on Nauru for asylum seekers.
Mr Bhojani was arrested in September 2018 and convicted in 2020 after pleading guilty to foreign bribery.
Asked by Liberal frontbencher James Paterson on Friday about the discrepancy between Mr Dutton and the AFP’s account, Mr Gaughan admitted that “tighter language” should have been used as he sought to deflect blame for the gaffe to the media for taking the AFP’s statement on face value.
Mr Gaughan, who is now the ACT’s chief police officer but was in 2018 a deputy commissioner, said he was at the July 12 meeting along with Border Force commissioner Michael Outram, then acting AFP commissioner Ramzi Jabbour and Home Affairs deputy secretary Linda Geddes in Mr Dutton’s Parliament House office where a briefing on “a foreign bribery matter” had taken place.
“There has been some misreporting and commentary that Mr Dutton was informed by the AFP that a then person of interest, Mozammil Bhojani, or company, Radiance International, was under investigation. To be clear, that is not correct,” he said.
“We accept that the question on notice about this matter submitted earlier should have used tighter language to avoid a misunderstanding.”
Mr Gaughan later added: “It is important to state Mr Dutton wasn’t briefed in relation to Bhojani or Radiance International. He was briefed in relation to some concerns that the AFP had around the overt activity and the potential impact that would have on the Nauruan government.”
Former senior public servant Dennis Richardson was appointed this week to conduct a review of Home Affairs’ contracting for detention centre providers.
AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw said police had to rely on “supplementary” information from another department to discover it had provided misleading evidence.
Separately, AFP’s chief financial officer Paul Wood told the committee that the agency had terminated all contracts with big four accounting firm PwC as of June 30, and a financial settlement was made.
“At that point in time we had nine contracts, seven related to internal audit,” Mr Wood said.
“We would pay them for what they had done, they would hand over what they had done, and we only agreed to pay a percentage of those contracts.
All AFP access passes were returned, all access [to AFP systems] was removed.”
Commissioner Kershaw said that in March 2018 the Tax Office had asked the AFP’s fraud and corruption centre for advice about internal PwC emails obtained by the ATO.
“An initial sample of documents was provided to the AFP,” he said.
“There was also an understanding the AFP would take no further action without further consulting the ATO.”
When the AFP asked for more detail, the ATO said it was unable to provide further material. In March 2019, the AFP advised the ATO there was not enough information to make an assessment.
