AWB makes progress in search for Mid-East grain export evidence

as posted here

AWB will soon have access to reports that may advance the grain exporter's defence that the Department of Foreign Affairs was aware of its payment of "transport fees" to Saddam Hussein's regime, The Age reported.

The Federal Court has ordered the Office of National Assessments (ONA) to make available 15 reports that may be used in a $100 million class action against AWB, beginning in November.

The federal intelligence agency must produce reports, and lists of officials who saw them, which may add to AWB's defence.

ONA had resisted producing the edited documents, on the grounds the material it contained may endanger national security.

The provision of the reports to the Cole inquiry into the wheat payment scandal had been at the request of the United Nations, and then-prime minister John Howard.

as posted here