29-07-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
AUKUS critic from US has tangled Aussie connection
We are sure that there is nothing personal behind the intense scrutiny that US defence official Elbridge Colby is applying to the $368 billion AUKUS nuclear submarine agreement Australia has with the US and UK.
Colby is under-secretary of defence for policy, the third-most senior official in the US Defence Department, responsible for briefing US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.
But Colby has family ties to Australia, and none of them are pleasant.
As has been reported, Colby's grandfather was William Colby, a CIA director in the 1970s. But what has escaped attention so far is how the former CIA director later became an adviser to the Nugan Hand investment bank. It is difficult to find a more infamous name in recent Australian history.
The investment bank collapsed in 1980 after one of its partners, Frank Nugan, was found dead from gunshot wounds in Lithgow. Another partner, Michael Hand, went on the run for decades.
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As this paper reported in 2015: 'The bank collapsed with debts in excess of $50 million, and a subsequent royal commission found evidence of money-laundering, illegal tax avoidance schemes and widespread violations of banking laws.
'Over the years, the two words 'Nugan Hand' became shorthand for drug-dealing, gun-running, organised crime and clandestine intelligence activities.
'But nobody has been convicted. Governments, security and espionage agencies ran dead or appeared to look the other way. Many men associated with the bank's affairs in Australia, the US and Asia have died early or in mysterious circumstances.'
