Regardless of the corruption allgeations Mr Atkinson's testimony...

Regardless of the corruption allgeations Mr Atkinson's testimony today has at least revealed that he and presumably also other WEC directors knew about the Obeids' involvement in Cascade before the company was proposed for takeover to WEC shareholders on 30 November 2010 and that they were absolutely aware that the Obeids' involvement has been putting the mining license for Mt Penny at risk. Nevertheless this significant risk was concealed from WEC shareholders (be it by simply not informing the Independent Directors' Committee) who would have borne the risk of Cascade becoming worthless after its $500m acquisition if it was denied a mining license for Mt Penny.
Interestingly according to an email from a Michael Johnstone sent to Travers Duncan (Volume 1 J 30, p. 92 of investigation documents) the other Cascade tenement, Glendonbrook, is "very tough" and "on its own not much opportunity".
So we could have ended up with pretty useless farmland for $500m while Cascade shareholders would have made quite an amount of money.
I don't know if this alone is a criminal offence in Australia (which I doubt as no financial damage has incurred in the end) but it definitely is a very severe breach of trust which redounds upon all directors who were part of the syndicate and raises doubts over their apitude to run the company.