In this case, it was officials at India's aptly named Ministry of Power who would be the target of Reddy's persuasion. Or in the words of one of Thiess' local managers, Kulbhushan Trehan, "doing the needful". Reddy's work on behalf of Thiess is outlined in an extraordinary forensic report obtained by Fairfax Media. The report, done by investigators from Deloitte in 2012 and buried by Thiess for four years, is a case study in how to turn a blind eye to corruption and cover it up once discovered. Thiess, one of the world's biggest mining services company and owned by Leighton Holdings [now known as CIMIC], signed a memorandum of understanding with Reddy on July 2, 2008. Under the deal, Reddy would use his influence to help Thiess secure the coal contract. In return, Thiess would give a Reddy company work at the mine, which would earn him $2.2 billion over 20 years. Meetings and promises

Twelve days after signing the Thiess deal, Reddy reported that he had the first of what would be numerous meetings with officials from the Ministry of Power and senior officials from India's National Thermal Power Corporation [NTPC]. By August 2008, the Thiess then managing director, Bruce Munro, should have had a reasonable inkling as to what Reddy was up to when he received this email from Trehan: "I had spoken to Syam 4/5 days ago and his loyal man has seen [a senior government official] yesterday and in his presence, [the official] has again instructed chairman NTPC, to expedite the negotiation and finalisation process. As an additional measure, through Syam, I am now trying to locate a man who can push things inside NTPC managerial levels." In any normal company, such an email from an overseas partner operating in a notoriously corrupt country would have rung alarm bells. But not at Thiess. Bruce Munro told the Deloitte investigators that he did not do any due diligence on Reddy.

Munro – who had told Reddy early in their relationship that Thiess would not pay bribes – was so hell bent on securing the coal contract that he twice extended the memorandum of understanding with Reddy. There would be many more red-flag emails from Reddy and his cohort. By early 2010, Reddy had become so blatant that Thiess could no longer pretend it did not know what its partner was doing. Reddy had told Thiess manager Chris Fosterling at least three times that he had offered as much as $16 million in bribes to officials in order to have the contract awarded to Thiess. This news was relayed to Munro in a series of emails. Despite being in possession of information that potentially put Thiess and himself in breach of Australia's foreign bribery laws courtesy of Reddy's actions, Munro did nothing but again extend the arrangement with Reddy. Whatever Reddy was doing it worked. Towards the end of 2010, Thiess was awarded a $6 billion contract to mine for coal. This was the high-point of Thiess' Indian adventure. Things soon began to unravel; work on the mine site was delayed, Thiess' relationship with Reddy was deteriorating and corruption concerns in Australia and India were seeping out.

Thiess' timebomb In 2012, Thiess auditors became concerned about the murky arrangements that had led to the company winning large contracts in Indonesia and India. Thiess asked law firm Ashurst to advise if the company or any of its executives or agents had breached the law or the company's code of ethics. Ashurst engaged Deloitte investigators to examine a trove of emails and question Thiess executives. The June 2012 report by Deloitte was dynamite. While Thiess had not made any payments to Reddy, its senior managers had abundant knowledge that Reddy had in his representation of Thiess made "corrupt" payments or promises to Indian officials. One Thiess manager told investigators that Reddy claimed: "I paid 10 million Rupee to win this contract, do you think you'd have won it if I didn't".

This knowledge of Reddy's actions meant Thiess was exposed as having possibly breached Australia's foreign bribery laws and the Corporations Act. The report made it to parent company Leighton Holdings – which was not told by Thiess about its pact with Reddy when it was first signed in 2008 – but was kept in-house for four years. Neither police nor corporate regulator ASIC were given the report. In an astonishing series of statements, Munro told the Deloitte investigators that he did not do any due diligence on Reddy when he signed the MoU in 2008 because things were done in a "mad rush" and "there was something to be gained from working with this guy". Part of Reddy's attraction, Munro told investigators, was his government contacts. "Mr Reddy sold to us that he would be able to steer us along the route of how government worked ... he was able to access the power minister just to put our case," the Deloitte report quotes Munro as saying.

Asked to account for his actions when it became clear Reddy was paying or offering payment, Munro admitted: "He probably paid someone, whether that be a holiday in Singapore or $1 million I'm not sure. I'd say that was his problem not mine." "It's easy to sit here in Australia and draw conclusions. But the culture and business in India is different, everybody in India lies to everybody." One final payment By 2014, two years after the Deloitte report was submitted, Thiess was stripped of its coal contract by the Indian government amid growing corruption concerns and a spectacular falling out with Reddy. Reddy had used his influence in the local police force to have Thiess India chief executive Raman Srikanth arrested and thrown in jail. Srikanth had been annoying Reddy by ensuring Thiess management in Australia knew the true nature of the company's partner.

Reddy also had arrest warrants issued for Munro and launched legal action against Thiess for breach of contract. He would later lose this case in arbitration. Back in Australia, Leighton Holdings and Thiess did nothing to act on the Deloitte report from 2012. Munro remained in his highly paid job until May last year. Despite the bitter end to its relationship with Reddy and knowing full well his likely involvement in corruption, Thiess last month decided to give the property developer $1.3 million in order to get him to withdraw a criminal complaint to Indian police, Indian court documents show. Reddy may be in need of that money. Last month, India's anti-corruption agency seized about $30 million worth of his assets in an unrelated bribery and money-laundering case. This article originally featured a photograph of a man who readers were told was Syam Reddy, a businessman who was allegedly involved in corrupt dealings in India in connection to Australian company Thiess. This was incorrect. The man in the photograph was YS Jaganmohan Reddy, a businessman and politician. The error was made in production. The Age/SMH apologise for the error.