On Monday, I wrote:

The Court’s judgment in Strickland is a powerful (if controversial) step in the promotion of the rule of law and the right to silence, but it is only a penultimate one. Only when (or if) the Victorian courts finally lift their suppression orders will the Australian public be able to judge to nobility or villainy of the investigators, prosecutors and courts in this matter.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Victoria reportedly lifted the suppression order, prompting the media to write at last on the High Court’s ruling two weeks ago and reveal that it concerned a high profile scandal: the involvement of two companies with close connections to the Reserve Bank of Australia in the bribery (said to total some $50 million) of various foreign government officials. The effect of the High Court’s 5-2 ruling  is that four of the alleged conspirators, all former executives of Note Printing Australia, which produces polymer notes for the Reserve Bank, cannot be tried on charges of bribery and (for three of them) false accounting. The media reporting also reveals that the two companies themselves both plead guilty to bribery, resulting in fines and heavy pecuniary penalties, and that a number of people have been convicted and sentenced (in some instances to prison) for their role in the scandal.

The lifting of the suppression orders means that the original judgments of Hollingworth J, which do not use pseudonyms, are now available. And that means that the pseudonyms in the High Court judgment can now be linked to actual names Continue reading →