<p>The agent, Aditya Khanna, engaged by the banknote firm 'Securency' - which is the subject of Australia's biggest foreign bribery investigation - is related to senior politician Natwar Singh, and has been raided by Indian police in connection with suspect arms deals, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Sunday.<br /><br />Securency hired Khanna, a businessman, and his Delhi-based firm DSSI Group to help get its plastic banknotes circulating in India.<br /><br />A DSSI Group executive last week confirmed his company's link to Securency, the report said. The RBA declined to comment.<br /><br />Like the wheat marketing company AWB Ltd of Australia, Khanna was named in the UN Volcker inquiry in 2006 as having profited from oil-for-food programme contracts that included kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.<br /><br />The Volcker inquiry sparked a royal commission in Australia into AWB's role as the biggest rorter of the UN programme.<br /><br />The revelation of Khanna's role with the RBA firm is likely to embarrass the Australian and Indian governments and their central banks, especially after Securency recently won a contract from the Reserve Bank of India to supply one billion polymer banknotes for a trial, the report said.</p>
<p>The agent, Aditya Khanna, engaged by the banknote firm 'Securency' - which is the subject of Australia's biggest foreign bribery investigation - is related to senior politician Natwar Singh, and has been raided by Indian police in connection with suspect arms deals, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Sunday.<br /><br />Securency hired Khanna, a businessman, and his Delhi-based firm DSSI Group to help get its plastic banknotes circulating in India.<br /><br />A DSSI Group executive last week confirmed his company's link to Securency, the report said. The RBA declined to comment.<br /><br />Like the wheat marketing company AWB Ltd of Australia, Khanna was named in the UN Volcker inquiry in 2006 as having profited from oil-for-food programme contracts that included kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.<br /><br />The Volcker inquiry sparked a royal commission in Australia into AWB's role as the biggest rorter of the UN programme.<br /><br />The revelation of Khanna's role with the RBA firm is likely to embarrass the Australian and Indian governments and their central banks, especially after Securency recently won a contract from the Reserve Bank of India to supply one billion polymer banknotes for a trial, the report said.</p>