Alexander Downer and Bill Clinton's cosy no-tender-necessary deal
Friday, 19 January 2018
This is the Honourable Alexander Downer.
And here he is with Bill Clinton in Sydney on 22 February 2006.
Bill was unwell.
In July 2006 a Funding Agreement was signed between the government of Australia and CHAI
1 August 2006 - start date of the PNG Contract as per the Evaluation Report
14 August 2006 - purported start date of the contract according to Austender*.
The AUSTENDER website is responsible for publishing contractual events as soon as practical after each occurrence.
While the website records the contract as starting on 14 August 2006, Austender did not have any advice from the contracting agency, DFAT to publish the contractual details until 3 years later. That's a very untidy arrangement, leaving lots of room for allegations about backdating etc.
On or about 20 August 2006 a notice, purporting to be a bona fide invitation to tender for the contract already awarded to the Clinton Foundation was published to the DFAT website.
Inviting tenders for a contract that has already been given meets the criminal points of proof for Obtaining a Financial Advantage (for self or another) by Deception.
It's a cover up, something that is not what it purports to be.
On the papers it appears a pretence was made at advertising a call for tenders after the contract, in whatever form it originally took had been awarded. If this was a construction company run by a mate of the Minister it would be investigated on the spot. It's clearly deceptive conduct. If the Clinton Foundation received a financial advantage (clearly it did in a $15M uncontested contract) the people who did the deceiving will be in the frame for fraud charges, ie those responsible for the overall decision to defy the process by improperly awarding the Clintons work they weren't entitled to.
ON 20 August 2006 the US web.archive.org organisation visited the DFAT website and archived a precise and perfect duplicate of what it displayed on that day.
The links still operate
Current Tenders
Tender documentation can be obtained by clicking on the tender title, or by contacting the officer nominated in the tender summary.
| Title | Closing Date |
|---|---|
| CANBERRA IMPLEMENTATION OFFICE - PROJECT MANAGEMENT, FITOUT DESIGN ARCHITECT & CONSTRUCTION SERVICES | 25 August 2006 |
| ACEH REHABILITATION PROGRAM - INFRASTRUCTURE COMPONENT - INFRASTRUCTURE MONITORING TEAM | 30 August 2006 |
| REVIEW OF INFORMATION SERVICES | 05 September 2006 |
| AUSAID INDONESIA PROGRAM - HEALTH ADVISER (JAKARTA) | 21 September 2006 |
| PNG–AUSTRALIA HIV AND AIDS PROGRAM | 03 October 2006 |
This is the page that follows from the link above.
In September and March Australian Government departments must publish to their websites details of all contracts entered into or extant during the preceding 6 month period.
Here is the AUSAID contracts list published around April 2007 covering the entire 2006 calendar year - the Clinton Foundation PNG contract was not published.
Here's the 2007 list, the project was published there with an end date of 2009 and a valued of $10.2M
On 11 October 2007 a genuine tender for the final Evaluation Report on the Clinton Foundation work was published to the Austender website.
Note the 4 extensions to the end date for the Clinton HIV/Aids project.
These are the 14 tenderers:
On 8 May 2009 the details of the contract awarded to the successful tenderer were published.
*On 15 July 2010 the contract details in what purports to have been an open competitive tender for the CHAI in PNG were published.
If Alexander Downer had handed a contract to a family member in circumstances like this there'd be hell to pay.
But somehow it's been OK to hand multi-million-dollar deals (in fact donations) to the Clintons.
A very cosy arrangement.