I was in charge, NBN chief Michael Quigley confirms

NBN head Michael Quigley has confirmed he was in charge of a regional division of the telecommunications giant Alcatel while bribes were paid in return for contracts.

NATIONAL Broadband Network head Michael Quigley has confirmed he was in charge of a regional division of the telecommunications giant Alcatel while bribes were paid in return for contracts.

US authorities allege bribes were paid because of insufficient internal control including in Latin America when Mr Quigley was Alcatel Americas president.

Mr Quigley has previously said that widespread corruption, which US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated for five years, was outside his area of responsibility.

The federal government has previously said that "the actions of a number of individual Alcatel Lucent employees detailed in the SEC's statement fell outside the accountability and jurisdiction" of Mr Quigley and Jean-Pascal Beaufret, another executive who joined NBN Co. There is no suggestion by the SEC that Mr Quigley or Mr Beaufret was involved in the corrupt activities.

The Weekend Australian obtained Alcatel company documents and annual reports and statements provided to US courts, which showed Mr Quigley had been president of Alcatel Americas and, as such, was responsible for the group's Latin America operations, including those in Costa Rica, where Alcatel bribed government officials to obtain contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

After being questioned about his role in Alcatel concerning Latin America, Mr Quigley yesterday confirmed he had been responsible for overseeing Costa Rica until January 2003.

"I have today been advised by Alcatel Lucent that, contrary to previous advice, Costa Rica was among the many countries and territories in North, Central and South America that were part of my wide-ranging portfolio of responsibilities in the period March 2001 to January 2003, including operations involving approximately 15,000 staff," Mr Quigley said.

The SEC alleges that, between 2001 and 2004, Alcatel paid more than $US7m in bribes to Costa Rican officials to obtain $US303m in government contracts. From 2002 to 2004, Alcatel paid large sums to Honduras "consultants" , which some employees knew would be paid to senior government officials in exchange for the awarding of contracts.

Mr Quigley has stressed that at no stage was he investigated by the US SEC or the US Department of Justice.

Of his role at Alcatel, Mr Beaufret has said: "I was running Alcatel North America and also Alcatel's fixed communications group until April 2005, then became Alcatel's president and chief operations officer."

Of his statements yesterday regarding his responsibility for "North, Central and South America", Mr Quigley said: "This, however does not change the fact that I was not involved in any of these matters as is evident by the fact that in the course of their thorough investigation, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Department of Justice did not seek to interview me nor did they make an adverse finding in relation to me."

He said Alcatel-Lucent (Lucent was merged with Alcatel in 2006) had previously issued a statement on December 31 that said Alcatel Lucent "in its investigations . . . had found no evidence that either Mr Quigley or Beaufret had any involvement in, or knowledge of" the actions cited by the SEC.

Mr Beaufret was Alcatel's chief financial officer from 2002 to 2007.

The federal government was not aware of the SEC investigation into Alcatel when it appointed Mr Quigley as NBN chief executive and Mr Beaufret as NBN chief financial officer. Mr Quigley did not tell the government about the corruption crises at Alcatel because it was "ancient history".

"I really didn't think it was relevant at all," he told the ABC last week. "In fact, it was frankly ancient history. By that time, by the time I was talking to the folks at NBN; the settlement had largely taken place."

However, it can now be revealed those statements are different from Alcatel's public documents. In a public disclosure by Alcatel filed with the SEC on March 31, 2009, the company said it was not certain what action authorities were taking over the Costa Rican bribery scandal.

"Neither the DOJ, the SEC nor the French authorities have informed us what action, if any, they will take against us and our subsidiaries," Alcatel said of investigations relating to its conduct in Costa Rica.

According to statements agreed to by Alcatel and the SEC, between about December 2001 and about October 2003 an arm of Alcatel paid "consultants" about $US14.5m - amounts that "bore no relation to any actual services provided by (the consultants) because it was, in reality, used in a large part to make bribe payments to Costa Rican government officials".