White Energy chief executive Brian Flannery has admitted he withheld information from the Australian Securities Exchange about the company’s decision to abandon a $500 million bid for a mining company at the centre of a corruption inquiry.

The mining veteran told the Independent Commission Against Corruption in Sydney yesterday that the deal to buy Cascade Coal was terminated in April last year because he believed it had paid $28 million to a rival company to withdraw its bid for a coal exploration licence in regional NSW in 2009.