Daisy Borlase

[Magpiespower]

No hard tackles as footy star rises above the pack
Errol Simper

THE Cole commission probably didn't know it when it first summonsed Darryl Borlase to give evidence, but it was dealing with a legend.

Beware the hard-nosed legal counsel who would rip into Borlase, once AWB Ltd's account manager in its Cairo office. Hither beware, or keep out of South Australia. Because Borlase, 39, was one of South Australia's best Australian rules footballers in recent years.

In 1998, he captained Port Adelaide to a state premiership and is a past winner of a Sunday Mail best-and-fairest medal. The man from Ceduna was solid, consistent and - back then - frequently referred to as one of the state's "elite" athletes.

And he's married to Jenny, nee Kennett, a Commonwealth Games netball gold medallist. It was the then Australian Wheat Board, in offering Borlase a promotion, which sealed his retirement after 13 years at, or near, the top of the code.

But if Borlase sat in the witness stand quietly cursing himself yesterday for accepting a promotion which led him before Cole, he needn't have worried. It was as if everyone at the bar-table, even Terence Cole and his senior assisting counsel John Agius, knew Borlase wasn't just any old witness.

Cole has heard from a dozen former and existing AWB executives and it's very possible, indeed it's probable, that none of them have had an easier ride than Borlase. He let everyone know where he stood in relation to "trucking" payments, or kickbacks to the Iraq regime, in his opening statement: "It was my understanding Alia (the bogus transport company used to channel kickbacks) was a company based in Jordan. "Until recent media coverage this was the extent of my knowledge of Alia.

"I never suspected Alia was not, in fact, providing trucking services." The closest Borlase was taken to anything possibly dubious was when Agius questioned him about a third-party export deal AWB did with a Russian company through an intermediary, Commodity Trading Specialists.

Even then, Agius tied it all up for him very neatly indeed: "The AWB sold 100,000 tonnes of wheat to Russian suppliers. The Russians obtained United Nations approval for the sale of that wheat to the Iraqis at a slightly increased price.

The AWB contract, through the brokers to the Russians, disclosed $USIS a metric tonne to be payable by the seller to an Iraq Grain Board-nominated account. "The contract approved by the UN didn't refer to that last clause.

"The AWB then obtained export certificates from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, relying upon the UN approval on a contract which was in the standard AWB form.

"That itself did not disclose the (kickback) payment of $USIS per tonne to the IGB account. Do you agree with that?" Borlase: "The documentation speaks for itself sir."

An easy mark.

[Jimmy]

shouldnt this be in the Gen. Disc. forum?