The Reserve Bank has been forced to change the locks and repair security cameras at its printing plant in Melbourne after an employee responsible for burning damaged banknotes instead pocketed almost $1 million.
RBA governor Glenn Stevens revealed the security measures at a federal committee hearing after questions from Labor MP Ed Husic, who had complained about a lack of transparency in the RBA’s response to the crime.
"Does the RBA accept that it should be a bit more up-front about the way that it is dealing with something that I think a lot of people would have genuine concerns about?" Husic asked, according to a report in The Australian Financial Review.
Stevens replied: "The failures that allowed the person concerned to do what he did were serious failures of procedure and security. The security, had it been implemented properly, would have prevented it but there were serious lapses in its implementation."
Wayne Kevin Jackson, a scientist responsible for incinerating damaged bank notes at Note Printing Australia, the bank's note-printing facility in Craigieburn, north of Melbourne, handed himself into police in August last year after an investigation by Australian Federal Police. Jackson pleaded guilty to taking almost $1 million in currency. Police allege the middle-aged man bought a $125,000 Mercedes, a silver Rolex, five gold nuggets and enjoyed trips to Europe.
Police discovered that a CCTV camera above a furnace at the Craigieburn facility was not active when the crimes were allegedly committed between May 2010 and May 2012.
"All the security, in terms of multiple locks, triple control, the video camera in operation – all those things that were at fault at the time, which opened the loophole or the weakness for that individual to do what he did – those things have been fixed,” said Stevens. "I think we have handled it properly. We fixed the problem.”