A former IT executive at Commonwealth Bank of Australia has been charged with bribery over payments he allegedly received from a US tech vendor.
US national Keith Hunter and another former CommBank staffer are accused of a "corrupt relationship" with a US-based IT firm which saw them hand over a lucrative contract without putting it to public tender.
In exchange, they were allegedly paid large sums of money. To date, police have frozen more than US$1.5 million in suspected corrupt payments.
Australia's Fraud & Cybercrime Squad has been looking into the case with the FBI since earlier this year, when the bank's internal investigators uncovered suspicious payments into the accounts of the two men.
Hunter has been granted bail and is pleading not guilty to two charges of bribery. The other former IT staffer is currently overseas, say police.