14

Remember Me?

A witness, who having been sworn, deliberately evades questions by some device may … be guilty of contempt. One such device is a feigned inability to remember.

Justice Brooking¹

It had taken sixteen months to get Bond onto the stand, but as soon as he walked into a packed Court 18B at Sydney’s Federal Court, it was obvious that it had all been a waste of time.

The former America’s Cup winner and one-time billionaire stumbled up the steps looking dazed and confused, as if wandering from the wreckage of a bomb blast. Once in the relative safety of the witness box, he sat crumpled and listless, a sad, sick, broken man. From time to time he stole a look around the courtroom or popped a pill into his mouth, but most of the time he simply stared into space. His lawyers said he was on Prozac, but his demeanour suggested he’d been hit with Largactil, a drug that’s notorious for its use on troublesome prisoners and is widely known as ‘the liquid cosh’.

This, of course, was the tragic figure that Bond’s lawyers had told the court to expect, a man whose brain was so damaged that his IQ had plummeted by sixty points, who was so depressed that he couldn’t read more than a couple of sentences without losing the plot.

Even when the simplest of questions was asked of him, he often took ages to answer, then did so in a whisper that was barely audible. Sometimes he would pause for up to a minute as he stared vacantly into space, apparently trying to turn the tumblers in his brain to unlock the information. Watching him as the clock ticked by, you wondered whether he even remembered that he had been asked a question. It was, by turns, pathetic, painful and ridiculous.

This Bond was absurdly different from the bouncing beach ball who had been seen in public only weeks before or the man who had romped in the surf at Cottesloe and given interviews to Channel 9 about his yachting triumphs. As Peter Smark from the Sydney Morning Herald acidly observed:

Gone were the smile, the bounce, the healthy glow; his hair was sparser and carelessly done, the trademark Rolex had been replaced by a cheap plastic number, the dark suit and silk tie were chosen carefully enough to be wholly respectable, but he seemed slumped into them, somehow shrunken. From this man who has sold projects, concepts, vast acreage and, above all, himself all his life, yesterday one would have bought little on offer. The old confidence seemed wholly gone. On show there seemed to be a man who had lost almost everything.²

At the end of the proceedings, Bond would be asked by his lawyer to tell the court how sick he was, but hour by hour his demeanour said it all. He had been depressed, had undergone major surgery, had suffered several strokes which had seriously interfered with his memory. ‘There are spots that I can remember quite clearly,’ said Bond, ‘and others that I just can’t remember at all.’ Conveniently, everything about Jersey and its network of offshore trusts and companies was right off his radar. ‘It is the 1990s now,’ said Bond. ‘I don’t remember anything. It’s just too long ago.’³

It was not just the details that escaped him, it was the very principle that he couldn’t be sure of. Four or five times he was manoeuvred into a specific denial, or forced to adopt the formula that he did not believe something to be so. But a hundred times or more he simply repeated the mantra that he could not recall.

It was clear from the start that Ramsay’s barrister, Francis Douglas QC, was in for a difficult time, and that Bond was not going to roll over and cooperate. But he must have felt that he had surprise on his side, for Bond had no idea about the wealth of evidence that Ramsay had gathered on his trip to St Helier. He did not know, for example, that the two partners of Touche Ross had given evidence on oath that they had run companies and trusts for him containing millions of dollars. Nor could he have guessed that Douglas had uncovered a paper trail showing Bond to be the beneficiary of trusts and the owner of undeclared bank accounts. Finally, and perhaps best of all, he would not have suspected for a moment that his interrogator would be holding two letters of instruction to Touche Ross from 1982 and 1987 that Alan himself had signed.

Douglas started off by enquiring whether Bond recalled Bob Ramsay asking him in November 1992 whether he had ever had contact with solicitors, accountants or financial advisers in Jersey. Bond had replied at the time: ‘Not to my knowledge in relation to my personal affairs’. So did he still hold to that answer, he was asked? He agreed that he did.⁴

Soon afterwards, Douglas put the first key question to Bond directly on oath, and elicited the following exchange, in the style of dozens that would follow:

Douglas:	Did you at any time during the 1980s give instructions to any other person for the setting up of an offshore trust in relation to your personal affairs?
Bond:	I don’t recall.
Douglas:	Is it possible that you may have done that and you do not now recall?
Bond:	I think if you have some information you might show it to me. It might refresh my memory but I can’t recall.
Douglas:	Do the best you can Mr Bond.
Bond:	I can’t remember anything.
Douglas:	You cannot remember it?
Bond:	No.
Douglas:	The question I put to you is, is it possible that you may have done so but you do not now recall?
Bond:	I just don’t remember.
Douglas:	You do not remember?
Bond:	No.
Douglas:	Do you think you might have?
Bond:	I just don’t remember.
Douglas:	You have no recollection at all.
Bond:	No I don’t.
Douglas:	You have no recollection at all of giving any instructions to any other person for the setting up of an offshore trust in relation to your personal affairs during the 1980s?
Bond:	I don’t remember.5

Were Alan Bond to be reincarnated as a squirrel, he would be a very thin one. Not only could he not recall where his nuts were hidden, he had forgotten whether he had any.

Bond was next asked by Douglas whether he had given instructions to his family lawyer Harry Lodge or to the Dallhold managing director Robert Pearce to set up offshore trusts or companies for him, or whether he had told any overseas advisers to accept instructions from those people. Once again, Bond could not remember. He had dealt with hundreds of thousands of transactions, he said, and his personal affairs had been interwoven with those of Dallhold and Bond Corporation, and it was all too long ago.

Well what about Touche Ross in Jersey, he was asked. Had he told Touche Ross in the early 1980s to accept instructions from Robert Pearce regarding his personal affairs? This drew a complete blank. The name Touche Ross rang no bells at all.

Bond:	I don’t remember Touche Ross at all.
Douglas:	You do not remember Touche Ross at all.
Bond:	No.6

After a couple more attempts to get an admission from Bond by rephrasing the question, Douglas then tried to get a denial:

Douglas:	So, Mr Bond, what I’m asking you is this. Do you deny ever having dealings with Messrs Touche Ross on the island of Jersey in any capacity during the 1980s?
Bond:	I just don’t remember the name Touche Ross at all.
Douglas:	Not at all?
Bond:	No.7

Douglas then produced the letter that Bond himself had signed in 1982 telling the partners of Touche Ross to accept instructions from Robert Pearce, in relation to (as Bond had put it) ‘any matters associated with me’. But this didn’t jog his memory either:

Douglas:	Just let me show you a letter. Do you agree with me that that is your signature?
Bond:	Yes, that’s my signature.
Douglas:	And do you agree with me that on 26 May 1982 you instructed the partners of Touche Ross & Co at St Helier, Jersey, in the Channel Islands, to accept instructions from Robert Ashley Pearce concerning any matters associated with you?
Bond:	That’s what this document says.
Douglas:	That document having been put before you, do you now recall signing it?
Bond:	No, I don’t.
Douglas:	Do you recall what it was about?
Bond:	No, I don’t.
Douglas:	You do not know?
Bond:	No, I don’t.
Douglas:	You have no recollection?
Bond:	No, I don’t.
Douglas:	And seeing that letter does not assist you in any way in refreshing your recollection as to what dealings you may or may not have had with Touche Ross on the island of Jersey during the 1980s?
Bond:	No, it doesn’t.8

Similarly, Bond had no memory of his second letter dated February 1987, in which he had told Touche Ross to accept instructions from Robert Pearce, John Bond, Harry Lodge and Jurg Bollag (as he had put it) ‘in relation to my affairs’, although he could hardly deny that he had signed it or dispute what it said.

Bond protested that ‘my affairs’ and ‘any matters associated with me’ could easily have meant Bond Corporation or Dallhold—which was hardly credible—then returned to the story that he could not remember Touche Ross, and certainly could not recall ever having contacted them.

This pantomime continued for most of the first morning in court and resumed after the lunch break, with Douglas asking Bond specifically about Jurg Bollag:

Douglas:	Did you ever instruct Touche Ross in Jersey to accept instructions from Mr Jurg Bollag in relation to your affairs?
Bond:	I don’t remember the name Touche Ross at all; it hasn’t come back to me over lunch.
Douglas:	See, what I want to suggest to you is that after early 1987 Touche Ross used to act on instructions from four people on your behalf, including Jurg Bollag.
Bond:	I have no knowledge of that at the present time.
Douglas:	Would you deny it?
Bond:	I don’t remember anything about it.
Douglas:	But do you deny it?
Bond:	I don’t remember.
Douglas:	So you are not able to confirm or deny that fact. Is that what you’re saying?
Bond:	I just don’t remember.9

Then, finally, we arrived at the essence of Bond’s position:

Douglas:	Mr Bond, what I am putting to you is this … from 1978 through until 1986 there were many companies and trusts which were set up in relation to your personal affairs by Touche Ross on the island of Jersey, and they administered many millions of dollars on your behalf on the instructions firstly, of Mr Harry Lodge up until 1982 and from 1982 through to 1986 on the instructions of Mr Pearce and that you knew about that fact at the time?
Bond:	I have no recollection of that. I don’t know whether that is correct or not.
Douglas:	Would you deny it?
Bond:	I have no recollection of it.10

What a strange life it must have been. Here were two partners of a firm of accountants in Jersey swearing on the Bible that they had administered millions of dollars for Alan Bond until the late 1980s. And here was Bond swearing in court on a similar oath that he just could not recall whether these millions were his. It really beggared belief.

What was also incredible was that Bond seemed not in the least excited to discover he had so much hidden wealth. Douglas at one point produced a letter from the settlor of the Icarus Trust, John Charles West Sauvary, who was writing to Touche Ross’s tame trustee company in 1983 to tell them that the assets in the trust were: ‘principally … for the benefit of Alan Bond … and his family’. Douglas then asked Bond whether news of this wind-fall came as a complete surprise to him:

Bond:	Yes, it does.
Douglas:	It comes as a complete surprise that this trust was set up for your benefit and the benefit of your family in Jersey in 1983.
Bond:	Yes, it does. I’ve never seen it before.
Douglas:	Do you accept that that trust was in fact set up for your benefit and the benefit of your family?
Bond:	I don’t know.11

It has always seemed to me that one of the key qualities of successful tycoons is an extraordinary nerve and a capacity to swear that black is white, without apparent difficulty. And Bond certainly had this ability in spades. He also revealed himself, as the examination went on, to be a master of the red herring and the irrelevant half-truth. Time after time, Bond would succeed in diverting the flow of Douglas’s enquiries, and time after time a huge effort would be needed to paddle back to the original question. A judge in Victoria, Justice Beach, once famously described the process of getting to grips with one of Bond’s corporate transactions as ‘like dealing with a large and slippery octopus’, and it must have been the same for Douglas trying to deal with Bond himself. Reading the transcript five years later, it is hard to see how he avoided losing his temper or screaming in frustration, yet he remained patient and persistent 99 per cent of the time.

In the middle of the first afternoon, Douglas produced a trump card that he had probably hoped would make Bond chuck in his hand. This was the 230-page transcript of the Jersey court examination of the two Touche Ross partners who swore they had looked after Bond companies. As soon became clear, their testimony was backed up by a huge number of banking documents from the Allied Irish Banks that showed the transfer of millions of dollars belonging to Bond. Bit by bit, the outline of this story was now unveiled, with glimpses of paintings and houses and horses and bank accounts that Bond and his family had enjoyed. The story of Bollag was also revealed—of how he had arrived on the scene in late 1986 or early 1987 to take over the running of Bond’s personal affairs and had moved the companies to Switzerland.

The huge detail of these revelations and the very fact that the Jersey accountants had talked must have been a huge shock to Bond, yet it was still not enough to get him to admit anything, least of all that Jurg Bollag controlled his money.

Douglas:	What I want to suggest to you is that Mr Bollag has under his control many millions of dollars which belong to you personally and which is used by him on your behalf to finance property and other investment transactions, both internationally and here in Australia.
Bond:	I don’t believe that to be true at all.12
Douglas:	The true situation is that you tell Mr Bollag what to do, Mr Bollag tells Touche Ross what to do and Touche Ross does it, and you distance yourself from these transactions because you want to be able … to deny having anything to do with these companies or their assets because you do not want them to become available to your trustee in bankruptcy.
Bond:	Well, that’s a figure [sic] of your imagination and that’s not supported by the facts.13

Later, Douglas asked about Bollag’s company JF Consulting, which had changed its name in January 1987 from Crasujo, and suggested that this had been done because the name was dangerous, since it was clearly based on the names of Bond’s children: Craig, Susanne and John or Jody.

Bond:	I think that’s a figure [sic] of your imagination. I don’t know how you can possibly get the names of children into the word Crasujo.
Douglas:	Well, it’s not difficult really, is it Mr Bond? C.R.A.—Craig, S.U.—Susanne, J.O. John or Jody.
Bond:	But then we could have—Bond T-shirts were named after me because the name Bond was used.
Douglas:	No one will dispute that Mr Bond because they were around well before you came to Australia.
Bond:	All I’m saying is that it’s just a collection of letters that I don’t think has any relationship.14

Towards the end of a gruelling first day, Douglas produced his second trump card: Harry Lodge’s handwritten notes from 1984, which mentioned Engetal, Pianola, Icarus Trust, Kirk Holdings, and a raft of others. Once again there were houses, horses and paintings that these companies had owned, and there was the fact that Bond’s personal lawyer had been taking notes about them in Jersey as he sat in Touche Ross’s office.

Maybe it was because he had by now spent almost six hours in the witness box, or maybe it was the line of questioning, but Bond cracked for the first time. On the verge of tears, his voice wobbling with emotion, he challenged Douglas to remember what he was doing in 1987, asking him what he would make of bits of paper ‘thrown’ in front of him and how much he would remember:

Bond:	I don’t have that ability, and I’ve told you that … I am getting very upset.
Registrar:	I can see that.
Bond:	And I’ve had enough, frankly … I’ve had enough and I don’t need to go on anymore.
Registrar:	Just take it easy there, Mr Bond.
Bond:	I don’t want to sit there and be tricked by somebody that takes two lines out of something, and it is just not fair on me.15

And with that, Round One came to a close, and battle was adjourned for the day.

Next morning, Douglas came straight back to the subject of Kirk Holdings, which had been the most important company in Bond’s Jersey empire.

Douglas:	I would suggest to you it was a company which you used frequently during the 1980s as a means of acquiring investments, painting, jewellery and other items of that nature.
Bond:	I don’t recall the name of Kirk Holdings in the 1980s or 70s or whenever you assert that the company was formed.
Douglas:	It just strikes no bell at all.
Bond:	No, I’m afraid it doesn’t.16

Bond’s failure to recall Kirk Holdings was harder to accept than his other memory lapses, not least because he would have learnt all about the company from Four Corners in July 1993, just ten months earlier. This had exposed Kirk as a Bollag company that had bought paintings and horses and held millions of dollars in Jersey bank accounts. And given that Bond had threatened to sue over this program, one would have thought that he would have watched it closely. Kirk had also been discussed in the press several times since, and Bond had actually sworn an affidavit about the company in 1988 during his daughter Susanne’s divorce proceedings. He had told a New Jersey court that Kirk owned two of his daughter’s showjumpers, Nicky and Puntero, and Bollag had sworn a statement at the same time admitting that Kirk was run by him. These statements were both quoted back to Bond by Francis Douglas, but he still maintained that he could not recall swearing the affidavit, had never heard of the company, could not recall anything about it and did not know who owned it.

Bond would also have known about Kirk because it had once paid him a large amount of money. On 12 December 1986, US$2.75 million had been sent from the company’s account in Jersey to Alan’s personal account at the London merchant bank Arbuthnot Latham, with explicit instructions from the Jersey end that no mention of Kirk Holdings should be made on the transfer. Douglas reminded Bond of this, asking him why such secrecy had been needed and what he had done with the money, to which Bond replied: ‘I have no idea’.

Douglas:	No idea? You receive US$2.75 million into your personal account and you’ve no idea what you did with it?
Bond:	No, I couldn’t tell you the ins and outs of the accounts …
Douglas:	So you’ve no idea what you did with that money?
Bond:	No, I don’t.17

Bond repeated his various denials about Kirk Holdings some thirty or forty times until Douglas finally tired of the charade and at last voiced what others in court had been waiting for:

Douglas:	I want to suggest to you, Mr Bond, that you are deliberately and consciously lying to me.
Bond:	You said that yesterday and I got very upset … so I think if you want to call me a liar, I am calling you one.
Douglas:	And I also want to suggest this, that you are deliberately feigning a lack of recollection of these matters because you do not wish to admit to any interest in these trusts or companies which were set up in Jersey on your behalf during the 1980s.
Bond:	I object to that. You have had documented medical evidence from Professor Cala18 and from other eminent neurologists which show quite clearly that the strokes that I had are on the right side of my brain and I have gone to great length to do the best I can in my memory and you know that to be so because you have had the benefit of looking at the documents together with other psychological reports which would support that I have done the very best I can. There are some things I just don’t remember and I have tried to tell you that.19

Since Bond’s apparent loss of memory had become the central issue in this examination, I decided to subject Bond to my own practical test. We had only met once before, which was the same number of times that Bond had been to Jersey, but I had made a couple of programs about him for the ABC and written his unauthorised biography, so I was sure that he would know who I was. I had not bargained, however, for the electric manner in which he would react to me. As he arrived at the hearing for the third and last day, I walked up alongside him with the cameras running, and handed him a business card, saying as I did so: ‘Mr Bond, Paul Barry from Four Corners, remember me?’. Bond stared at the card as if it was a snake, then dropped it onto the pavement and ground it into the tarmac with his shoe. ‘So you do remember me?’ I asked. ‘Keep right away from me,’ he replied. ‘Keep right away from me.’²⁰

Parts of Bond’s memory were obviously working, even if Jurg Bollag and Jersey were covered in a convenient fog. But the court apparently had no desire to probe the obvious question of whether he was faking amnesia about subjects that might incriminate him. Instead, Registrar Howard listened sympathetically to Bond’s lawyer complain about the outrageous way in which his client had been impeded on his way into court, and then asked the same lawyer to warn members of the media not to harass Mr Bond again in this manner. And after that, the charade of Bond’s failure to recall was allowed to resume.

On the third day of proceedings, however, Alan’s mask of memory loss slipped for just a moment, when he suddenly displayed a dazzling command of detail. Bond was asked by his own lawyer to explain why he had considered giving Bollag a hugely valuable option that would have sent $100 million a year tax-free to Jurg’s company in the Isle of Man (click here).

Suddenly, the brain-damaged zombie was replaced by the 1980s dealmaker, with a head full of numbers whose significance he obviously understood, even if no one else could:

Bond:

Well, there was a profit already made in Queensland Nickel because the Queensland Nickel debts were acquired as a billion dollars of debts by Standard Chartered with his assistance. He had an option for $3 million over those debts, providing Standard & Chartered were paid out $100 million. So the whole of Queensland Nickel would have gone to the hands of George Bollag and it is in that context that he had agreed with me verbally, because we hadn’t finally documented, although there may have been structures attempted to be put into place, that we would share the net gain, because there was no point in having a billion dollar debt in one group and paying that. Now that debt was paid down to $50 million. Mr Bollag could have arranged the $50 million to pay out the Standard Chartered Bank, but at the request of myself and Michael Cross he was convinced to allow the Hongkong Bank and Tricontinental to take a first security and he would take a second position. But it was on the understanding that they would have a long-term loan. He would not have given that consent for a six-month loan because he was entitled to the whole of the debts that went prior to the Hongkong and Tricontinental debt, so he gave up his position in the expectation that the $300 or $225 million loan as being provided by the Hongkong Bank and Tricontinental could have been serviced and the loan could have been repaid back and he stood to gain half of that amount of $350 million at least.21

This did not appear to be a man who was so brain-damaged that he had forgotten whether he had stashed millions of dollars overseas. But I doubt whether anyone who watched Alan Bond’s examination for those three days in court, or read about it in the press, actually believed his claims of brain damage and amnesia. So why on earth did the Federal Court let him get away with his ridiculous performance?

Certainly, the court had plenty of power to punish him, either under the Bankruptcy Act 1966, which makes it an offence to refuse to answer questions in a section 81 exam-nation, or via the wider law of contempt, which allows judges to throw witnesses in jail for refusal to answer questions.

And, crucially, the case law on contempt contains a famous example where a Victorian Supreme Court judge threw a witness in prison in 1978 for claiming that he had lost his memory. As Justice Brooking told the court:

A witness, who having been sworn, deliberately evades questions by some device may similarly be guilty of contempt. One such device is a feigned inability to remember. The witness who deliberately evades questions by falsely swearing that he cannot recall interferes with or obstructs the due administration of justice just as much as the witness who openly and directly refuses to answer those questions … A court must have the power to punish for contempt the liar who parries questions with a pretended inability to remember.²²

Interestingly enough, Brooking’s witness had marshalled four doctors to testify that his concentration and memory were impaired. One said he was suffering from acute anxiety; another said this anxiety had possibly impaired his memory; a third insisted his symptoms were genuine; and a fourth ventured that his memory was probably impaired by depression. Brooking, however, was swayed by none of them.

My own assessment of (the witness) is that he is a sly and thoroughly untruthful person, well capable of misleading members of the medical profession for his own purposes.²³

There was, as everybody now knew, a range of medical opinion about how mentally incapable Bond had become by May 1994. Psychiatrists hired by his lawyers said he was depressed and brain-damaged; experts hired by his trustee in bankruptcy said there was next to nothing wrong with him and that he was malingering.

But no one was in a better position to judge Bond’s mental state in mid-1994 than the friends who were doing business with him. Jim Byrnes, who saw him regularly at the time, says simply that Alan’s ‘brain damage’ was all an act. Bond would be fine one moment as they walked down the street together, then suddenly slump his shoulders because he had spotted a camera. Between court appearances, he says, Bond exhibited extraordinary command of detail in a whole series of business deals. He concludes bluntly: ‘There was nothing wrong with him’.²⁴

Another Sydney businessman, Neil Cunningham, who did business with Alan Bond throughout 1994, is equally adamant that Bond was not brain-damaged. Cunningham says that heart surgery may have made him marginally less sharp than he had been before, but only by a matter of five per cent or so. And he sums up Bond’s claims of ill health and memory loss as ‘a pantomime’.²⁵

Luke Atkins, yet another who did business with Bond in late 1993 and early 1994, simply laughs at the suggestion that there was anything wrong with him. In fact, to the people around him, Alan’s performance obviously was a huge joke. And, remember, these were not Bond’s pursuers or adversaries but business partners and friends.

Justice Brooking was not the only judge to think that the legal system needed to be protected from liars. In backing his decision on appeal, the High Court of Australia referred to a case from 1953 when a bankrupt called Charles Coward had been jailed for a similar contempt. Coward had been ‘examined up hill and down dale for weeks’ over his financial affairs and had eventually been hauled before a judge who had asked a series of questions himself and then concluded that: ‘A substantial part of the answers … represented in my opinion a shuffling and fantastic attempt to conceal the truth about the bankrupt’s dealings’. The judge had sent Coward to jail and told him he could come out when he was prepared to return to the court and give some ‘proper answers’.²⁶

Sadly, no such judicial bravery was to be seen in the Bond case, even though Bond now proceeded to repeat the trick with the Dallhold liquidator John Lord, turning this examination into a farce as well, by claiming that he had forgotten almost everything.

Three times, Bond said he was too sick to continue and needed to see a doctor, complaining that he was suffering chest pains and dizzy spells. And three times the examination was interrupted. Eventually, John Lord agreed to postpone the hearings for a month, and finally he abandoned them altogether.²⁷

Weeks later, he must have cursed his decision, because it became clear how busy Bond had been during the week of the hearings. Telephone records from the Sheraton Wentworth Hotel, subpoenaed by Bob Ramsay, showed that the ‘ailing’ entrepreneur had spent his time outside the courtroom making calls to Switzerland, the USA, the UK, India, Pakistan and Singapore. He had also made two dozen calls to a businessman in Australia with whom he was setting up a gold deal.

In the week of the Dallhold examination, when he had appeared so pale, uncertain, incoherent and incomprehensible, Bond had sent eight faxes and made sixty-five international calls at a cost of some $1,360, including one costing $66.50 to a phone box at Zurich railway station, six lengthy calls to the Zurich Hilton and one to a number in Zug that the Swiss authorities identified as the Zuger Kantonal Bank. It was as if he magically recovered as soon as he left the court, then became afflicted again once he took the stand.

Yet not even this revelation was enough to cause the court to march him back into the witness box and make him answer the questions properly. Nor was it enough to cause anyone to threaten him with jail for contempt.²⁸

The insolvency laws in Australia are among the most powerful weapons in this country’s legal arsenal. Based on the tax acts, they give liquidators and trustees in bankruptcy the same sort of powers that the taxman possesses—to seize documents and examine people on oath. But even the toughest laws only work if they are properly enforced. And throughout Bond’s crucial examination on oath, the Federal Court had palpably failed to enforce this one.

Instead, Bond had been allowed to make a public fool of the justice system with his claims of brain damage and memory loss. And the court had neither insisted that he answer the questions nor punished him when he failed to do so. Thus, the best opportunity to locate and recover Bond’s fortune had been allowed to slip away.

Quite simply, Bond had been allowed to get away with it yet again.