IN AUSTRALIA ON 6 NOVEMBER 2017, the award-winning current affairs television program Four Corners aired an episode called ‘Inside the Tax Havens of the Rich and Powerful’. Their insightful report showed how many high-earning individuals and companies habitually hid their profits by siphoning them through tax havens, often through a maze of trust companies. Thirteen million files from the records of offshore service providers, the majority from the law firm Appleby, were obtained by German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, which investigated them in partnership with ICIJ, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, including Four Corners.
It must be said that Appleby, based in Bermuda, insist that their business is legitimate. But Appleby themselves were named in the Paradise Papers as having been found wanting in twelve compliance reviews over a decade.
Among the famous names revealed in the Paradise Papers were Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, Paul Hewson (aka Bono), Lord Ashcroft (former treasurer and deputy chairman of the English Conservative party), Shakira, Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Nicole Kidman, Keira Knightley, Spain’s famous bullfighter El Cordobés, Apple, commodities giant Glencore, Nike—and Michael Hutchence.
Yes, Michael’s name was hitting the headlines yet again, this time through the public broadcaster the ABC. ‘Appleby insists what they do in the offshore world is legitimate,’ the Four Corners narrator said in the program’s introduction. ‘But the Paradise Papers reveal … some very dubious deals, including one to exploit the legacy of the Australian rock star Michael Hutchence.’
Six weeks before the ABC’s program aired, a Four Corners producer had asked me if I would do an interview for the show. They were planning to unleash material about Michael’s affairs after his death. One of the entities mentioned was Chardonnay Investments. I was quite familiar with Chardonnay, of course, which housed Michael’s royalties income. This was the family trust wherein Michael named all immediate family members as beneficiaries: Kell, Mother, Rhett and me along with ‘all issue of the settlor’ (Tiger). As far as I know none of us has ever received a penny from it.
But, by this time I had already given several on-camera interviews for Channel Seven’s two-episode television documentary about Michael called The Last Rockstar (let’s call it TLR for brevity), due to air just before the Four Corners episode.
The producers of TLR were concerned. The Channel Seven documentary intended to promote Michael’s artistic legacy and new music. This was the appealing element its makers had sold me on, and now I was being told that if I spoke to Four Corners, all that would be under threat.
I had even lured the shy, very private Rosanna into giving an on-camera interview for TLR. Ro’s relationship with Michael was so sacred to her that many of her friends had no clue about it. This was the first time she’d ever spoken about Michael publicly.
I felt so comfortable with the Channel Seven project that I let them use my personal, private family footage for their show. My little films, never aired before, showed Michael as son, brother, uncle and boyfriend, with all his natural, down-to-earth charm there for everyone to see. The scenes were shot at Vieille Ferme des Guerchs, on the Gold Coast, at the supermarket, driving through Grasse and St Tropez in France, cooking prawns on his ‘barby’ and clowning around just like most families do on holiday.
Yet I felt torn. So many aspects of my late brother’s financial affairs still disturbed me.
Four Corners did not divulge what they had when briefing me about their desire to interview me. The term ‘Paradise Papers’ never came up in our conversations. I couldn’t see the supposed conflict. I believed the Channel Seven production was about Michael and his music, while Four Corners was investigating the financial side. Of course, what eventuated was much more ‘shifting sands’ than that.
I was aware that Diamond had been interviewed for the documentary. However, his involvement had been downplayed to me. Danny Saber also appeared in TLR. Neither he nor I was given an advance screening, as some of the media were, even though we were booked on television and radio to promote it. We were told that they were too busy editing to slice out some footage for us. So imagine my surprise when The Last Rockstar aired and Diamond was ‘the star’ of the show with his many minutes’ unchallenged interview time, meaning that the producers had interviewed him first and should have appraised me of what he had said so that I might have had a chance to reply. Perhaps they chose not to as they would have then revealed how much time he was to have on camera.
When Michael died, Colin Diamond, who was then a co-executor of his will, not only collected everything (169 items) that had been in his hotel room but also various keepsakes, guitars, musical equipment, photographs, jewellery, videos, artworks, clothing, journals and diaries from Michael’s various homes—some of Michael’s most private possessions.
Four Corners reported, after TLR had aired, that many of Michael’s friends and family ‘were stunned to see Colin Diamond revealing the star’s intimate possessions left in his room the night he died. Even his diary.’