Former Commonwealth Bank exec Keith Hunter pleads guilty to bribery charges

Former bank IT boss Keith Hunter has pleaded guilty to taking millions in bribes linked to contracts with a US firm.

Keith Hunter leaves a Sydney court after being granted bail last year.

A former Commonwealth Bank IT executive has pleaded guilty to bribery charges relating to multi-million contracts between the CBA and a Silicon Valley-based tech company.

Keith Hunter, 62, the bank’s former manager of IT engineering, is accused of taking millions in bribes along with former senior CBA colleague Jon Waldron.

NSW police alleged the pair took a combined total of $2.9 million in bribes from US technology entrepreneur Eric Pulier in return for millions of ­dollars in CBA contracts to software company Service­Mesh.

CBA’s December 2013 deal with Service­Mesh is the focal point of the police investigation that has seen the two former executives charged and an FBI investi­gation launched into the US software company and its millionaire founder.

Appearing briefly in the Downing Centre magistrates court in Sydney today, Mr Hunter was told to return to court for sentencing on December 5.

Despite initially pleading not guilty Mr Hunter — an American national – has now pleaded guilty to charges that carry a possible jail sentence. He is now likely to face a reduced sentence.

Mr Waldron is understood to be continuing to plead not guilty to the charges.

The Australian revealed in April that the CBA was warned more than a year before it was reported to police that that a multimillion-dollar­ IT contract at the centre of its bribery scandal should not proceed and that it would “hurt the bank”.

The employee who raised the alarm about the deal was then sacked eight weeks after making clear to the bank his concerns­ about the $10.5 million deal.