Abuja — Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Sanusi Lamido Sanusi yesterday demanded an explanation from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), that country's central bank, as to how its bank-note subsidiary firm's dealings in Africa ended up in with multimillion-dollar payments to offshore tax havens.

The Australian newspaper The Age, which first broke the alleged bribery story, quoted Sanusi as saying that "I think they [the Reserve Bank] should explain. I think that corruption is a two-way street: there are those who give and those who take. We must fight it from both ends. The best way to fight corruption is to expose it and we must get to the bottom of it. If the investigations go deeply enough and the money trail is followed, the beneficiaries will be exposed."

It said Sanusi described as "disturbing" the revelation that more than $10 million in commissions were wired to accounts including some in secretive tax havens by the RBA's bank-note firm Securency.

Top Nigerian government officials are alleged to have been bribed by Securency to produce the recently introduced polymer currency notes. Sanusi has promised to investigate the bribery saga.

Also yesterday, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it has commenced investigations into the alleged bribery. "The case is attracting our attention", EFCC's spokesman Femi Babafemi told Daily Trust.

A senior official in the commission however said EFCC is being discrete about the investigation in order to stop the matter being politicised.

It is alleged that Securency, which is owned overseen by the RBA and chaired by assistant Reserve Bank governor Bob Rankin, sent the payments to middlemen it hired to win banknote deals in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.

Nigeria first introduced polymer banknotes during Professor Chukwuma Soludo's reign as Governor of CBN.

The Age said that the RBA governor Glenn Stevens and Mr. Rankin have refused to answer questions about the growing commission-for-contracts scandal.

Asked whether he would encourage Nigerian policing agencies to assist the AFP inquiry, Sanusi said: "It will be in the interest of this country in my view to work closely with all agencies aiming to expose and deal with corruption and our agencies will give all support."

He said the scope of Nigerian police investigations would depend on the information provided by Australian authorities.

He said: "My sense is that this investigation will need to be triggered by some concrete information showing that Nigerian officials benefited financially from any aspect of the polymer contract. If we had this, I have no doubt the President will authorise our Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to work with Australian police authorities to get to the bottom of things."