Second ex-Commonwealth Bank exec charged with fraud

Another former Commonwealth Bank IT executive has been charged over a multi-million dollar bribery scandal.

Former Commonwealth Bank IT executive Jon Waldron

Another former senior Commonwealth Bank IT executive has been charged over a multi-million dollar bribery scandal involving allegedly corrupt payments from an American IT company.

Jon Waldron, a 44-year-old New Zealand national, who police last week said was believed to have travelled to the United States, handed himself to police in Sydney yesterday and was bailed on seven counts of corruptly receiving a benefit.

The Australian understands Mr Waldron returned from the United States voluntarily after advice from his solicitor and was not accompanied by the FBI.

Last week Mr Waldron’s former senior colleague at the bank, Keith Hunter, 61, who was CBA’s head of IT operations until he was fired in December, was charged with bribery offences and granted bail after he allegedly received corrupt payments from US IT company ServiceMesh.

Mr Hunter has pleaded not guilty.

NSW Police allege during their time of restructuring the bank’s IT services Mr Waldron and Mr Hunter received millions of dollars in kickbacks from ServiceMesh in return for providing the company with “tens of millions of dollars” worth of contracts.

Police allege the two former CBA executives were paid $US2.1 million ($2.8m) in kickbacks to deliver ServiceMesh major contracts that did not go to tender. Both men were fired by the Commonwealth Bank last year.

ServiceMesh is a Californian-based start-up headed by Eric Pulier that was bought by US computing giant CSC for about $US325m in 2013. It is alleged that the two men received the kickbacks once ServiceMesh was sold to CSC.

Visa and CBA are two of ServiceMesh’s highest-profile clients, and Mr Hunter was also formally global head of operations at Visa.

At the time of Mr Hunter’s arrest, police said they were looking for his colleague — a New Zealand national and IT engineer — who detectives believed had travelled to the US.

However police announced this morning Mr Waldron had turned up at North Sydney Police Station yesterday.

It is understood his bail conditions are similar to those imposed upon Mr Hunter, including surrendering his passport, reporting daily to a police station and not approaching international points of departure or leaving NSW.

The 44-year-old has been charged with seven counts of agent corruptly receive benefit, involving a total of almost $1.9 million. He has been granted conditional bail to appear in Downing Centre Local Court on May 1.

The Fraud and Cybercrime Squad confirmed it is working with the FBI as the investigation continues.

With AAP