nbn corrupt liars

[sprintcyclist]

supporters and employers of known corrupt people

NATIONAL Broadband Network chief Michael Quigley has admitted making more incorrect claims about his past as one of the top executives of French telecommunications giant Alcatel, which was involved in widespread corruption across the globe.

In 2009, when Mr Quigley was appointed to the $1.8 million-a-year job of running Australia's biggest infrastructure project, the federal government was unaware that Alcatel was then the subject of a five-year US government investigation.

After this fact was revealed by The Australian late last month, Mr Quigley wrote in an opinion piece that he had not told the government of the corruption investigation at Alcatel because the investigation had been resolved and was "ancient history".
At the first public hearing of the joint parliamentary committee into the $36 billion NBN yesterday, chaired by independent Rob Oakeshott, Mr Quigley admitted his claims about the investigation were incorrect - after he was presented with publicly available Alcatel documents that disproved them.

Other MPs to question Mr Quigley included opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull.

In a written statement, presented outside the committee hearing, Mr Oakeshott praised The Australian's coverage of Mr Quigley's past at Alcatel. "I think on this particular occasion they (The Australian) have done some good work in the public interest, and this has been backed up by the NBN committee evidence today," he wrote.

The investigation into Alcatel by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Department of Justice continued until last December. The US government and Alcatel reached an agreement, under which the telco is required to pay fines of $US137m ($130m), but it is yet to be approved by a US court.

Separately, in an opening statement to the committee, Mr Quigley "unreservedly apologised" for incorrectly stating publicly that during his time at Alcatel, he was not responsible for overseeing operations in Costa Rica. Mr Quigley reiterated he was never investigated by the SEC and the US Justice Department. Further, he said Alcatel had in December announced he was not involved in, nor had any knowledge of, the corruption at Alcatel. There is no suggestion Mr Quigley was involved in the corruption.

The Australian last week revealed that Mr Quigley was head of Alcatel Americas, which covered both North, Central and South America, from March 2001 to January 2003.

Alcatel's global corrupt dealings, including bribing government officials in exchange for lucrative contracts, were first exposed in Costa Rica. Alcatel employees paid more than $7 million in bribes to corrupt officials in the Central American country in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts.

Revelations of those bribes in Costa Rica kick-started the US government's five year investigation into Alcatel.

Mr Quigley told the parliamentary hearing yesterday he previously did not believe he was responsible for Costa Rica because he had spoken to a former colleague, currently at Alcatel, who had provided him with this information.

The NBN chief executive yesterday also clarified an assertion he made in an article published in The Australian on May 5, in which he said it was Alcatel who reported the corruption to authorities. Presented with publicly available documents, Mr Quigley agreed it was Costa Rican officials who had contacted Alcatel over the corruption and that he had referred to Alcatel passing this on to US authorities.

The Australian yesterday revealed Mr Quigley was also responsible for three other countries in Latin America where Alcatel employees paid bribes to corrupt officials to win contracts. Those countries were Honduras, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

For the past two days Mr Quigley has refused to comment when asked about his responsibilities concerning those three countries. He was not questioned about those three countries at yesterday's committee hearing.

Julia Gillard yesterday did not respond to a question regarding the revelations about Mr Quigley's past at Alcatel.

Following his role as Alcatel America's president, Mr Quigley was later president and chief operating officer of Alcatel global in 2005 and 2006.

The SEC claims Alcatel employees continued bribing officials for more than 18 months -between October 2004 and June 2006 - despite Alcatel being aware, from October 2004, that its employees had "paid bribes at the highest level of the Costa Rican government using sham consultants".

Mr Turnbull said Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and the government should have been more aware of Mr Quigley's role with Alcatel.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/in ... 6057092055

[Jovial Monk]

Go away sprint.

Copying and pasting entire articles like you do is a breach of copyright. The Australian is a joke.

[sprintcyclist]

please make a coment on the couurpt official the leftards hired with our money

[Jovial Monk]

In defence of an honourable man

When Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull took up the microphone in yesterday morning’s Sydney meeting of the Federal Parliament’s joint committee on the National Broadband Network, the packed room grew so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.

Those who attend parliamentary committees associated with the NBN live have over the past several years become used to controversy at such events. It is not unusual at all to see strong-minded Senators such as Mary Jo Fisher, Scott Ludlam or Simon Birmingham pepper public servants, NBN Co executives or even Communications Minister Stephen Conroy himself with tough questions in an attempt to hold them to the public account for their actions or to drive a particular political agenda.

But yesterday’s event was different.

Turnbull is no low or mid-level Senator or Member of Parliament. He’s not the sort of politician who will only be known well by his local electorate or a particular interest group.

He’s one of the few politicians in Australia who has a truly national profile. Any issue he touches becomes the instant fodder of media attention. He is seen as stateman-like, a man of integrity who often rises above the at-times foetid political arena. A former and perhaps future leader of the Coalition and a man who many see as a good long-term candidate for Prime Minister or even leader of an Australian republic.

And yesterday Turnbull didn’t disappoint his audience.

Without beating around the bush, he launched directly into a precise and highly targeted personality attack on NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley, who was appearing before the Committee all morning.

Turnbull, it appeared, had examined with a fine-tooth comb Quigley’s previous statements about his lack of involvement in the allegations of bribery and corruption at his former employer and current NBN supplier, Alcatel-Lucent, and compared them with tiny details recently released in a series of disclosures by the company to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.


Over a fraught series of exchanges with a bewildered Quigley, Turnbull extracted from the NBN Co chief executive a series of acknowledgements that Quigley had spoken “too loosely” in the past with respect to the investigations by the SEC and the US Department of Justice into Alcatel-Lucent.

As has been widely reported in the past 24 hours, Quigley was forced to apologise about his errors.

Now, if you believe Turnbull, there is no witch hunt being conducted with respect to the NBN Co chief executive. “Nobody is making any allegations against you, least of all anybody here,” Turnbull told Quigley yesterday, noting he just wanted to give the executive the chance to “correct” some of the statements which he had made.

However, nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact of the matter is that Turnbull has latched on to ongoing speculation by a small number of media outlets about a potential link between Quigley and what went on at Alcatel-Lucent half a decade ago to launch a considered and deliberate campaign against the NBN Co chief, in an attempt to undermine and ultimately destroy his personal credibility as the man responsible for implementing Labor’s flagship NBN policy.

As Quigley has repeatedly stated, and as most commentators acknowledge, there is no evidence of any link between the executive and the bribery scandal in Latin America which has led Alcatel-Lucent into a $130 million settlement with the US Government. The US investigators were so convinced of this fact, they had no interest in speaking with Quigley or NBN Co finance chief Jean-Pascal Beaufret, who was also high up in Alcatel-Lucent at the time.

Yet the constant and incessant moves by Turnbull and other members of the Coalition and the media to bring up the issue in connection with Quigley speaks of a desire to create that link in the minds of the public.

Turnbull’s carefully considered attack on Quigley yesterday was calculated precisely to take advantage of the Member for Wentworth’s own sky-high media profile and tarnish Quigley’s personal and professional reputation by forcing him to acknowledge in public that he was wrong.

It matters not to Turnbull, it would seem, nor to most of the media, that the issue on which he forced Quigley to correct himself and apologise for was an issue which — as Quigley pointed out yesterday — he could not be expected to know anything about, as it was half a decade in the past and it was something in which he had no involvement.

But it matters to me.

Unlike most of those involved in the current National Broadband Network debate, I did choose to conduct an investigation on Mike Quigley’s background when he was appointed to be chief executive of NBN Co. In my then-role as News Editor of ZDNet.com.au, I assigned journalist Liam Tung to speak to as many sources as possible and put together a profile of Quigley featuring facts not generally known. The idea was to build up a picture of the man on whose personal abilities and reputation the foundation of the NBN would be built.

At that time, Tung found it extremely hard to find anyone who would say a bad word about Quigley.

As the profile of the man emerged, it became clear he was well-respected as an intelligent and capable leader, a man who stayed true to his Australian roots yet had emerged on the global stage. It was perhaps also true that Quigley was disappointed not to have risen to the chief executive role at Alcatel-Lucent — yet he appeared to have bourne that disappointment humbly, and has been content to work in lesser roles.

Quigley is also a survivor of life-threatening illnesses which many in similar positions would have succumbed to — as well as a family man and a loyal supporter of other Australians in Alcatel-Lucent when he was there.

Now, since Quigley has taken the reins of NBN Co, this trend has not changed.

http://delimiter.com.au/2011/05/17/in-d ... more-15491

Playing the man and not the ball, despicable!

[Hebe]

What does this have to do with the NBN itself?

Nothing.

[Jovial Monk]

This does tho: http://www.polanimal.com.au/viewtopic.p ... 640#p35940