"Not quite kosher" – that's how a man who preceded Malcolm Turnbull on the board of a mining company describes how it did business in Russia.

Bill O'Neill was an independent director at Central Mining until 1993, when it secured a stake in a massive Siberian gold mine with the financial backing of the now Australian Prime Minister's merchant bank, Turnbull & Partners.

Mr O'Neill said the company, which later changed its name to Star Mining, gained a foothold in Russia through bribes and that his fellow director Ian MacNee openly discussed paying-off officials.

"I was a director of the company and he used to talk about how he had to pay out $10 million [as a bribe] to get the whole thing going," Mr O'Neill told Fairfax Media on Tuesday.