Transfield strikes again. Did the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre sever ties with NAB over the bank’s ownership of shares in Transfield Holdings? The ASRC, a not-for-profit delivering services to asylum seekers, listed NAB as a ”partner“  in its last two annual reports. Until recently, NAB was also a substantial shareholder of Transfield Services, the company running immigration detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. NAB has donated furniture to the ASRC’s new employment centre in Dandenong in Melbourne’s outer-eastern suburbs, and the ASRC publicly thanked NAB for the donation in a Facebook post. An eagle-eyed commenter brought up NAB’s links to Transfield on that post and got no response. Now, ASX documents show NAB ceased to be a substantial shareholder in Transfield Services on May 13 (following a smaller divestment of shares on March 7). The ASRC’s Serina McDuff says individual NAB employees recently helped the organisation with its move to new headquarters in Footscray as part of  NAB’s staff volunteer program, but couldn’t confirm the status of the corporate relationship at the time of NAB’s donation of furnishings to the Dandenong employment centre.

But did NAB’s divestment in Transfield come too late? McDuff confirms the ASRC no longer has a relationship with NAB, having “re-assessed relationships following the change to offshore providers”. Transfield Services signed a 20-month contract to run the Manus Island and Nauru immigration detention centres in March 2014. A recent tweet from the ASRC asks people to donate to a Commonwealth Bank account.

It’s a bad look for NAB no matter how you spin it; making money from Transfield’s treatment of asylum seekers while trying to minimise tax payments by donating to an organisation that aims to support the people Transfield is damaging. That’s a funny way of exercising “corporate responsibility”.