This kinda explains why everyone has been resigning.Still should...

This kinda explains why everyone has been resigning.
Still should get rid of the chairman i reckon...he looks really dodgy. Maybe the fed government will recommend everyone related needs to quit ... there would be no point getting rid of AWB as manager if all the directors involved were gone...its basically a new company from there on. I bet John Howard is going to throw the book at these directors...could be some huge jail time for these suckers....someones gotta take the blame...and at the end of the day its the people at the top.



Court finding turns WA farmers against AWB
21st September 2006, 14:45 WST

Farm leaders in WA, Australia’s biggest wheat exporting State, revealed yesterday they were under mounting pressure to call for the dumping of the chairman and most of the board of scandal-hit monopoly wheat exporter AWB.


WA Farmers grains sections president Ray Marshall said yesterday this week’s preliminary finding by the Federal Court that AWB had defrauded the United Nations had fed an emerging mood of “absolute disgust” among growers fiercely loyal to the company just a few months ago.

“There are moves afoot around the agripolitical forum that are calling for the resignation of the board, and the growers at the farmgate are now saying much the same thing,” he said.

“From the first day of the Cole inquiry we kept saying this can’t get any worse and we were defending AWB. Now you see the other end of the trail, and what fools we were. We have had the biggest snowjob that’s ever been pulled.”

Mr Marshall stopped short of calling for the resignation of the directors including chairman Brendan Stewart, who has headed AWB’s board since 2002, a period encompassing the company’s internal investigations into sanctions-busting kickbacks in Iraq.

He said they were yet to be proven guilty of any offence and he also was concerned their removal could leave a black hole.

“But there’s a huge amount of movement and I’ve got to consult my council,” he said. “The directors can claim innocence or ignorance, but ultimately the bucks stops with them.”

WA Farmers’ position would be politically significant given its members have been such strong supporters of AWB.

The other major WA farm group, the Pastoralists & Graziers Association, a long-time fierce critic of AWB and the export monopoly system, reiterated yesterday it had lost confidence in the board, noting it had written to all directors in 2004 calling on them to make sure AWB had been accurate and truthful amid emerging concerns about UN oil-for-food rorts.

“The position of most of the board members, including chairman Brendan Stewart, is no longer tenable,” PGA Western Graingrowers president Leon Bradley said.

Mr Bradley said the Federal Government had no option but to remove AWB’s veto right over wheat exports after the finding this week by Federal Court judge Neil Young that, prima facie, it had deliberately and dishonestly structured a deal to trick the UN.