BRITISH corruption fighters have charged the former deputy chairman of the Reserve Bank of Australia currency firm Securency with bribing Vietnam's former central bank governor.
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The British businessman Bill Lowther is the first Securency board member to face criminal charges flowing from the federal police-led global corruption inquiry into Securency and Note Printing Australia.
The AFP has already charged eight former senior executives from the Reserve Bank companies with conspiring to pay multi-million dollar bribes to officials in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam in return for bank-note printing contracts.
Mr Lowther, who stood down as Securency's deputy chairman following his arrest and questioning last October, was appointed to the company's board by the Reserve Bank's joint venture partner in Securency, British firm Innovia. The Reserve Bank owns half of Securency and all of Note Printing Australia.
Mr Lowther is alleged by Britain's Serious Fraud Office to have conspired in 2003 to pay for the son of the then governor of Vietnam's state-owned bank to attend Durham University in England.
