‘Senior people within Home Affairs’ failed to vet offshore detention contractors under AFP investigation

A ‘failure to do the proper due diligence’ by Home Affairs led to decades of contracts for companies under AFP investigation, a former ASIO official claims.

Dennis Richardson led an inquiry into the departmental actions of Home Affairs. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

An inquiry into Home Affairs has found the department awarded contracts in the offshore detention program to companies with links to drug trafficking, the illegal arms trade and other offences for over a decade,

The probe was led by former ASIO director general and defence chief Dennis Richardson and reportedly shows a lack of scrutiny by Home Affairs officials, which linked the department to corporations that had allegedly caused a breach of sanctions against Iran.

As reported by Channel 9’s 60 Minutes, the inquiry found evidence of corruption and bribery in many of the corporations that had built and run the country’s contentious offshore detention facilities.

“Intelligence and other information, which was readily available, was not accessed. As a consequence, integrity risks were not identified,” the report, also provided to Channel 9, reads.

Mr Richardson cited time pressures in the failure to appropriately vet candidates for contracts that ran up until the end of 2022.

“Co-ordination, communication and information flows within Home Affairs were inadequate,” he said.

“With proper due diligence, Home Affairs could have considered alternative suppliers, and, if this was not possible, the implementation of mitigating measures. But this was not done.

“Over time I don’t think proper scrutiny was put on the contracts and I think it was a case of a lack of communication between different parts of the Department of Home Affairs, and between other parts of government and Home Affairs.”

Mr Richardson’s report tied the failures to “senior people within Home Affairs”, but did not lay any blame on opposition leader Peter Dutton, who served as the Minister for Home Affairs when the particular contracts were awarded.

Channel 9 reported that one of the firms named in the confidential report by Mr Richardson belonged to Nauru contractor Mozammil Bhojani who was under the investigation of the AFP for allegedly bribing Nauran officials.

Founder of the security company Paladin Group Craig Thrupp was reported to have earned $150 million from the Manus Island contract, and went on to face an AFP investigation for the bribery of Papua New Guinea officials.

“(The Paladin Group) got contracts in areas in respect of which it had no particular expertise,” Mr Richardson said.

“Those contracts were consistently renewed over a period of time without ever being rechecked, and it was the failure to do the proper due diligence which led to Paladin getting contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”