AWB has small win in big grain hunt

as posted here

ELISABETH SEXTON
September 18, 2009
AWB has made some progress in its search for evidence about the Howard government's knowledge of the grains exporter's payment of ''transport fees'' to Saddam Hussein's regime.

The Federal Court yesterday ordered a federal intelligence agency, the Office of National Assessments, to produce 15 edited reports for potential use in a $100 million shareholder class action against AWB beginning in November.

Justice Lindsay Foster said it was ''sufficiently on the cards'' that the reports, and lists of officials who saw copies of them, would advance AWB's defence that the Department of Foreign Affairs knew about the payments.

ONA had resisted a subpoena from AWB, arguing that producing the reports would endanger national security.

Justice Foster ruled that there was little risk of that because the material had already been exposed during the 2006 commission of inquiry into the Iraqi kickbacks headed by Terence Cole, QC. Mr Cole, who did not have a security clearance, published a ''distillation'' of the contents of the reports. Parts of the reports had been masked on security grounds before Mr Cole distilled them by lawyers assisting him who had security clearances. Justice Foster accepted AWB's submission that the rules of evidence would require it to tender the edited reports, rather than the distillation. ONA will have another chance to object to AWB using the reports after Justice Foster has read them.

ONA's director-general, Allan Gyngell, gave evidence that Australia's intelligence partners would be ''extremely anxious and displeased'' if any of the information in the reports was disclosed ''for the purposes of civil litigation between private citizens''.

The provision of the material to the Cole inquiry had been at the request of the United Nations and the then prime minister, John Howard, Mr Gyngell said. Foreign intelligence agencies had expressed ''considerable displeasure'' that any disclosure was made to the Cole inquiry, he said.

The shareholders allege they suffered loss because AWB concealed its payment of transport fees to the former Iraqi government in breach of United Nations sanctions. They argue that if Australian officials had known about the payments, ministerial permission would not have been granted for AWB's shipments of wheat to Iraq.

The ONA had a partial victory when Justice Foster upheld its claim for public interest immunity in relation to 47 reports, which were read by lawyers assisting the Cole inquiry who had security clearances but not given to Mr Cole because they were deemed insufficiently important to his inquiry.

as posted here