Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The people responsible for the breach of UN sanctions and for deceiving both my department and the United Nations—not according to the Labor Party, but according to Commissioner Cole—are the executives of AWB Ltd. We condemn, in any circumstances, all of those people—and it happens from time to time—who endeavour to defraud or mislead the Commonwealth in the process of breaking the law. That is why, following the Volcker inquiry, with which we cooperated, we established the Cole inquiry—because we wanted to get to the heart of this matter. As I explained on the radio this morning, we have nailed this by establishing what happened—and it would not have happened if it had not been for an independent inquiry. There are 66 countries and some 2,200 to 2,300 companies referred to in the Volcker report—

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