AWB has launched a court bid to stop the Australian Securities and Investments Commission giving the Federal Police confidential material arising from its closed-door examinations of former executives involved in the $300 million Iraq kickbacks scandal.

AWB fears the former employees - some of whom face the prospect of criminal charges - "might be motivated to disclose" information that AWB considers legally privileged if they believed it might absolve them from blame or aid their defence in a future prosecution.

The wheat exporter says it does not know what information or documents ASIC plans to give the police and that it has not been given any opportunity to isolate material it considers privileged.

The stoush comes as authorities prepare to lay criminal charges over AWB's secret payment of $300 million to the former Saddam Hussein regime - a flagrant breach of UN economic sanctions that lasted at least four years.

When the kickbacks were exposed, AWB initially denied it had done anything wrong and its senior managers insisted the fees were legitimate payments.

In 2006, the final report of the Cole inquiry cited 11 former AWB managers and a former senior BHP Petroleum executive as warranting further investigation for possible criminal charges.

A multi-agency taskforce, which includes ASIC and is led by the Federal Police, has interviewed various former and current AWB employees and directors.

In documents filed at the Federal Court, AWB claims ASIC has wrongly assigned itself the task of deciding what AWB would consider confidential or legally privileged and that the regulator has no right to hand the material to the police.

The Federal Police earlier this year asked ASIC to hand over information that would assist the taskforce.

In July, ASIC told AWB that the police had asked for both the transcripts of individual interviews and copies of all the witness statements obtained by ASIC.

ASIC asked a "delegate", or arbiter, to consider AWB's objections; AWB complains that it does not know the identity or qualifications of the delegate.

In early September, ASIC revealed the delegate had decided the material could be released to the Federal Police because ASIC staff had followed guidelines intended to preserve any claim for legal privilege.

The Victorian Supreme Court recently heard one of the former AWB managers, Charles Stott, was told by the oil-for-food taskforce that, in the next few months, it expected to give the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions a brief recommending criminal charges against him.