Former FBI director slams AFP delays, inaction in Nauru bribery case

A former director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louis Freeh, has criticised the Australian Federal Police over its handling of a long-running transnational bribery case.

Queensland exporter Getax Australia was formally charged in 2020 with one count of conspiracy to bribe a foreign public official between 2007 and 2012.

Ahead of the criminal trial, lawyers for Getax commissioned Freeh, now a consultant, to provide a report on the AFP investigation, in so much as documents released to the defence team would allow.

Former FBI director Louis Freeh has given his appraisal of an AFP investigation into transnational bribery.Credit: SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Freeh – who is also a former US special agent, federal prosecutor and federal trial judge – told a District Court hearing in Brisbane on Tuesday it was his opinion that the AFP investigation was flawed.

Citing protocols around transnational investigations, and his own experience, Freeh said Australia had a treaty with Nauru that should have allowed AFP officers to act on the bribery allegations when they were first made in 2010.

Freeh said AFP officers did not visit Nauru to pursue the matter when required, nor seek to interview potential witnesses when they visited Australia – let alone push for a joint taskforce.

“They didn’t even try,” Freeh told the court.

By seemingly concluding, prematurely, that co-operation would not be forthcoming and potential witnesses lacked credibility, the AFP had undermined the investigation, he argued.

“It’s like having a crime scene and not sending your investigators to visit [it],” Freeh told the court.

He suggested that if the AFP did not know how to conduct a foreign bribery investigation, it should have called in foreign experts.

“The fact that they were going to go it alone is obvious by the fact that it took them 10 years not to accomplish an efficient investigation,” he said.

The island of Nauru, in Micronesia.Credit: iStock

Barrister Jeffrey Hunter KC, representing the Commonwealth, asked Freeh whether he had considered the political situation in Nauru – including disruption to the legal system – and the challenges it may have presented the AFP.

Freeh said he was aware of criminal investigations being undertaken in wartime Iraq and did not believe Nauru politics were so unusual as to preclude the AFP making more of an effort.

Barrister Saul Holt, KC, representing Getax, told judge Nicholas Andreatidis, KC, he would argue that the prosecution case was unviable.

Lawyers for the Commonwealth were granted an interim non-publication order over aspects of the case, and of Tuesday’s proceedings.

Andreatidis adjourned consideration of the stay application until Wednesday, and will revisit the non-publication order at a hearing in November.

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