A suspended sentence of three months is the punishment for a former sales director of Securency International convicted on a charge of false accounting.Clifford John Gerathy, 67, of Maroubra, will have the sentence suspended for six months, Justice Kevin Bell of the Supreme Court of Victoria ruled on Friday."I infer that public service were your main motivations, not private gain," Bell told Gerathy."Your working record is exemplary," Bell said of Gerathy's career (which involved working for the Reserve Bank of Australia since he was a teenager).  Gerathy shifted to the RBA's half-owned Securency in the 1990s to help promote offshore sales of the polymer substrate used in the production of modern banknotes. The charge relates to the raising of a debit note for around A$80,000 in mid 2010, which was in effect the payment of a commission to an agent used by Securency in Malaysia to procure a banknote order for Note Printing Australia from the central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia. NPA is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank."You, Mr Gerathy, are a minor player," in the affair, Bell said."You made one bad mistake that was completely out of character, and that is my assessment."Securency's agent in Malaysia, Abdul Kayum Syed Ahmad, had been expecting a commission of five per cent on the banknote order from Bank Negara."It is not clear how such a commission was agreed to be paid," Bell said, "but … it was was agreed."There was then "pressure [from Kayum] for the commission to be paid," Bell said."The problem was, senior management had gone cold on the idea of paying the commission on an order for banknotes, rather than polymer."A pragmatic solution, involving a lie, was agreed between David Ellery, the chief financial officer [of Securency] and another senior officer," Bell said. Ellery was convicted and sentenced on a corresponding charge in 2011. Non-publication orders apply to the other person cited by Justice Bell in his judgment.These other officers, Bell said, "instructed that this [commission] be paid against an invoice for reimbursement of expenses."You implemented this shameful deceit," he told Gerathy.Justice Bell said there was "still a need for general deterrence, and I am not prepared to apply a monetary penalty. A suspended sentence is adequate renunciation of the offence by the court."