Endnotes

1: Oh Lucky Man

1. Montague CJ in Dive v Manningham 1551, quoted in Dennis Rose, Lewis’s Australian Bankruptcy Law, 10th Edition, Law Book Company, Sydney, 1994, p 8.

2: Bankrupt … Not Broke

1. Alan Bond was specifically excluded as a beneficiary of the Alpha Trust, formerly the Alan Bond Family Trust No 1, on 4 July 1991, one day before Dallhold went bust. This was done to make doubly sure that the trust’s assets were kept away from Alan’s creditors.

2. The Independent, 27 January 1990, ‘Down-Under, but not yet out’, Teresa Poole.

3. It was impossible to know how much the family trusts had borrowed against their gross assets. In 1993, Business Review Weekly was able to find around $10 million worth of loans. There may have been more, which would have reduced the Bonds’ net worth below $70 million. It is worth noting that in 1994 the Bond family told Bond’s trustee in bankruptcy, Bob Ramsay, that their net worth was ‘less than $20 million’ even without taking any of the assets in the family trusts into account.

4. Most of the onshore trusts set up for Bond and his family in the 1980s had some element of discretion but also specified members of the Bond family as beneficiaries. At least one of the offshore trusts for Bond was a true discretionary trust: it did not specify a beneficiary, but a separate letter of wishes made it clear that the settlement was ‘intended for Alan Bond and his family’. (See Icarus Trust, p 99)

5. In 1999 the federal government announced changes to the tax laws designed to make the use of trusts far less attractive. In theory, these should also make trusts less attractive for those who want to put their assets beyond the reach of creditors. It remains to be seen whether they will have that effect and whether other devices will be found to do the same job.

6. Alan Bond’s bankrupt estate, statement of affairs, April 1992. NB 1071 of 1992.

3: Never Say Die

1. West Australian, 27 September 1991, p 1, ‘Perth grand prix: Alan Bond overtaken by writ’, David Humphries.

2. Interview with author, March 1999.

3. ibid.

4. Channel 7 News, Perth, 26 September 1991, reporter Howard Gratton.

5. Rogers J, 23 September 1991 in NSW Supreme Court, 50191, 50431, 50489 of 1991.

6. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 1992, Eric Ellis, ‘Battling Bond in Chelsea hideaway’.

4: Divorce

1. Susan Mitchell, Public Lives, Private Passions, Simon & Schuster, Sydney, 1994, p 51.

2. Mitchell, ibid, p 61.

3. New Weekly, 21 October 1993, p 24, ‘I love him … I always will’, Suzanne Monks.

4. Woman’s Day, 15 June 1992, p 6, ‘Bondy’s blonde tells all’, John-Michael Howson.

5. Woman’s Day, ibid.

6. David Michael, unpublished manuscript, 1992.

7. Michael, ibid.

5: Friends

1. Bond’s was the second biggest personal bankruptcy the world had ever seen. The record belonged to Robert Maxwell’s son Kevin, who filed for debts of £406 million in the UK in September 1992.

2. Business Review Weekly, 13 March 1995, ‘How Bond beat bankruptcy’, Philip Rennie.

3. Bond argued each time that he needed to be in Europe to sell the Greenvale nickel mine and to take up consultancy jobs that could earn money for his creditors. But there was more than a whiff about the offers he was getting, in that they came via exotic tax havens from Bond’s old friends. The Bermuda-based Van Diemen’s Company, for example, wanted Alan to act as a consultant to its cattle, sheep and tree-farming business in Tasmania, but needed him to travel to London to meet the directors, whose leading light was an old mate of Alan’s called Graham Ferguson Lacey. Another would-be employer was linked to an American stockbroker friend, Robert Quinn. His company, Heyside (UK), was an off-the-shelf affair that had been activated the day before Bond went bankrupt and had as its registered office a basement suite in the north of England that it shared with several hundred others. A third proposal came from a company called Expo Development, which was owned by the Romulus Trust and the Remus Trust, and was based in the British Virgin Islands. Its managing director was Jurg Bollag, who would play a central part in the Bond story over the next three years. Bollag wanted Bond to travel to the USA to advise on a diamond-mining project.

4. Daily Telegraph Magazine, London, January 1995, p 28, ‘The name’s Bond … Alan Bond’, Paul Spike.

5. Report from Dennis Tannenbaum in Bond’s bankruptcy proceedings, NB1071 of 1992, filed in Australian Federal Court, February 1994.

6. Spike, ibid.

7. Bond was released because one alleged liar had fingered another. A Perth builder called Max Healy, charged with perverting the course of justice, accused Alan’s mate Laurie Connell of lying in court to get Bond convicted, and of boasting of this fact in a discussion about giving false evidence to get Connell off race-fixing charges. With doubt cast upon the original verdict, the conviction was quashed. In November 1992, after facing the charge for a second time, Bond was acquitted.

8. Tony Weatherald interview with freelance journalist and investigator, Jamie Fawcett, 1996.

9. Mitchell, ibid.

10. Weatherald interview with Jamie Fawcett.

11. Bond’s legal team produced no witnesses in Perth, so there was no apparent justification for the switch of venue. Justice Hill described the move as ‘totally unwarranted’ and awarded costs against Bond.

12. The Bankruptcy Amendment Act 1991 received Royal Assent on 17 January 1992 and came into force on 1 July 1992. It contained significant and wide-ranging changes to the Bankruptcy Act 1966. The key amendments are to be found in sections 23, 24, 25, 26, 27. The act gave bankruptcy trustees greater power to investigate a bankrupt’s affairs offshore, to limit his or her overseas travel, to object to a bankrupt being discharged from bankruptcy, and to recover assets that had been disposed of in an attempt to defeat creditors. It also set new limits on income that a bankrupt could retain, requiring that 50 per cent of income above a certain limit (initially set at $24,000) be shared among creditors. See Annual Report of the Insolvency and Trustee Service, Australia, 1991–92 and 1993–94 for details and evaluation of the changes.

6: Bondy’s Banker

1. Armand Leone (plaintiff) v Susanne Bond Leone (defendant), Superior Court of New Jersey, Chancery Division, Family Part, Bergen County. Docket NO: FM-20312–88.

2. Bollag’s old boss Ed Merszei told me in 1993 that Jurg was ‘definitely in the business of asset management’ with ‘a lot of high-net-worth clients’.

3. Certified statement of Susanne Bond Leone in Leone v Leone.

4. Reply certification of Armand Leone, p 2, 23 May 1988, Leone v Leone.

5. Armand Leone, ibid.

6. Certified statement of Alan Bond, p 2, 30 May 1988, Leone v Leone.

7. Simon Farrell, examination under section 77C, Bankruptcy Act 1966, 10 March 1993, pp 41–43.

8. Alan Bond, examination under section 81 of Bankruptcy Act 1966, Federal Court, 3 May 1994, p 52.

9. The SULA acronym came from the Syndicated US$ Loan Agreement put together for Bond in January 1990 by Hongkong Bank, Tricontinental and Bank of New Zealand.

10. Dallhold’s records confirm that Bollag’s Isle of Man company Metal Traders was also paid $1 million a year in fees to act as consultant on the project. The true ownership of this company was hidden. Its shareholders were the Langtry Trust Company and Langtry Consultants, based on the island of Jersey, another offshore tax haven.

11. West Australian, 27 December 1994, p 1, Mark Drummond, ‘Bond debunks Bollag “myth”’.

12. The letter to Lacey was produced as an exhibit in Bond’s bankruptcy examination in the Federal Court in May 1994.

13. Richardson to author, June 1993.

14. Australian Financial Review, 12 March 1995, p 1, ‘What a hide: Bond’s secret stash’, Peter Hartcher.

7: Lord of the Manor

1. Interview with freelance journalist and investigator Jamie Fawcett, 1996, parts of which were published in The Australian, 11 October 1997, p 19, ‘The go-between’.

2. The Upp Hall Estate—brochure by William H Brown, Grantham, Lincs, UK.

3. Dallhold Estates (UK) Pty Ltd v Susanne Bond, Bishop’s Stortford County Court, case no: 920219; defence and counterclaim.

4. The documents were alluded to in Australia’s Request for Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters to Switzerland (Exhibit ARF2 in VG446 of 1997), which was drafted by the Australian Federal Police. The letter said: ‘This decision [to sell Upp Hall to Dallhold] was made in order to avoid consolidation disclosure problems in Bond Corporation’s accounts arising out of the fact that Susanne Bond, the daughter of Bond (who was a director of Bond Corporation Holdings Limited), was living on the property on a non-commercial basis’. The letter of request went on to say that Dallhold’s London lawyers, Freshfields, sought tax advice from Price Waterhouse about the tax implications, and were told that it was important that Dallhold’s rental payments to Lindsey should be ‘at a commercial open market level’. This was only relevant if Lindsey and Dallhold were related parties, which led police to conclude in this letter that Lindsey was really a front for Bond.

5. Armand Leone (plaintiff) v Susanne Bond Leone (defendant), Superior Court of New Jersey, Chancery Division, Family Part, Bergen County. Docket no: FM-20312–88. Certified statement of Susanne Bond Leone.

6. The three teams were chasing money for Bond Corporation Holdings Ltd, Dallhold Investments Ltd and Bond’s bankrupt estate. Often they did not know what the others were doing. Sometimes they felt they weren’t entitled to share information; sometimes they felt it wasn’t in their interest to do so; sometimes they just didn’t realise it was important. Almost always, they were struggling with an unimaginable mass of detail that made it a near superhuman task to keep track of what they had discovered.

7. On 25 February 1992, Justice Chadwick ruled in the High Court of Justice in the UK, Chancery Division, that the-creditors of Dallhold Estates (UK) Pty Ltd would best be served by keeping the company alive. This was because, in his opinion, Dallhold Estates was likely to win unencumbered possession of the valuable leasehold of Upp Hall. In relation to Susanne’s lifetime tenancy he said: ‘In the circumstances that that interest appears to be based upon no documentary title at all and to be based upon gratuitous promises said to have been made to her by those formerly in control of Dallhold Estates—promises which it is difficult to see that they could properly make consistently with their duties as fiduciaries—I am bound to take the view that the administrator would be likely to succeed’.

8. Dallhold Estates (UK) Pty Ltd v Susanne Bond, Bishop’s Stortford County Court, case no: 920219; defence and counterclaim.

9. Interview with freelance journalist and investigator Jamie Fawcett, published in The Australian, 11 October 1997, p 19, ‘The go-between’.

10. John Bond attempted to explain this generous rate of interest to Bob Ramsay by suggesting that Lindsey was to share in profits on the resale of the farmland, but neither Bollag nor Lindsey Trading Properties had a right to demand that the properties be sold. And farm prices were falling at the time.

11. The estimate is from a confidential Dallhold report to creditors in December 1994, filed in the Federal Court.

8: Millions Offshore

1. Bond always called Bollag ‘George’.

2. Even if one can get a court order and make the accountants or lawyers talk, there may still be insuperable problems. For example, they may not know whether the person they’re dealing with is the owner or the front man. And they may simply be taking instructions from the trustee of a discretionary trust, in which case there would have to be a whole new legal battle to get hold of the money. Indeed, it seems perfectly possible that those chasing Bond’s fortune could have gone round the world and found just that. Any assets held by Bollag would almost certainly have been in a trust of some sort. In theory, they could have been as safe from creditors, even if the trust was unmasked, as the Bond family home and other Australian assets had been in the trusts Bond had set up in Australia in the 1970s.

3. A comprehensive Financial Tracing Report was prepared for the 1990–92 Royal Commission into WA Incorporated (Royal Commission into Commercial Activities of Government and Other Matters) to show how money had been sent offshore by players in the WA Inc saga. Several versions of this were completed, drawing on work by Lieberfreund and further investigation by a Western Australian lawyer, Andy Palmer. The full report, which is believed to run to more than 400 pages, has never been published, but segments of it were obtained by a journalist in early 1993.

4. Details of these companies are contained in leaked segments of the Financial Tracing Report. The report reveals that two dozen companies paid fees into the bank account of a Touche Ross service company called Balmoral Securities. Estimates of how much money was channelled through these companies depend on whether the fees were 0.25 per cent, 0.50 per cent or 1.00 per cent. The investigators concluded that the middle figure was most likely, putting the money flow at $50 million.

5. Plaistowe to author, June 1993.

9: Jersey

1. Federal Court, 3 May 1994, section 81 examination of Alan Bond, p 41.

2. Bond repeated this denial about offshore advisers in his bankruptcy examination in the Federal Court on 3 May 1994, p 14.

3. Royal Court of Jersey, Re: Alan Bond, a bankrupt. Transcript of evidence, John Geoffrey Davies, 3 November 1993, p 74.

4. ibid, p 83.

5. ibid, p 10.

6. ibid, p 10.

7. ibid, p 41.

8. Royal Court of Jersey, Re: Alan Bond, a bankrupt. Transcript of evidence, John Hatton-Edge, 4 November 1993, p 148.

9. A favourite link in the money chain was the little-known First Interstate International Bank of California, which had an office at 885 Third Avenue, New York.

10. Even the simplest of transfers from, say, London to Sydney in US dollars can go via two banks in New York and one in Melbourne and look incredibly complicated, because smaller banks often use big international banks as gathering points in preference to sending the money directly.

11. Broome to author, September 1999.

12. To take an example, a transaction in Bond Corporation Holdings Ltd that no one bothered to examine involved the payment of some $10 million for an option over a Mexican insurance deal that was written off almost as soon as the money was spent. It might well have been entirely legitimate, or it might have been a neat way of getting money into the international banking system. It simply illustrates the principle that one could not follow all the trails.

13. Alan Bond never repaid Dallhold this $4.5 million.

14. Around $600,000 had gone to buy horses Puntero and Nicky du Marais for Susanne to ride, and around $4 million had been spent on paintings from Bond’s London art dealer, Nevill Keating Pictures. The odd $600,000 had also been sent off to Sydney to Rivkin James Capel to buy shares for Bond, and the odd $100,000 had been spent on diamonds from Graff & Co in New York.

15. Bond bankruptcy examination, Federal Court, 4 May 1994, p 100. Bond had four accounts at London’s Arbuthnot Latham Bank, at least three of which he had failed to declare to Bob Ramsay.

16. Diana Bliss, section 77C examination, 24 June 1994, transcript, p 45.

17. Debbie Shaw, a client manager at Touche Ross, had taken a phone call at the end of May 1987 in which Bollag had asked that Kirk send a £50,000 deposit on Evelyn Gardens to a firm of London solicitors. She had then instructed the Allied Irish Banks in St Helier to send the money from Kirk’s account.
      Details of the loans and non-repayment are disclosed in records from Touche Ross which were exhibits in Alan Bond’s examination in the Federal Court in May 1994. For what it’s worth, Juno also received the balance of Kirk’s account at the Allied Irish Banks when it was closed in December 1992. And while the amount was only £51.87, it was the principle that counted.

18. Bond bankruptcy examination, Federal Court, 4 May 1994, p 85.

19. ibid, p 144.

20. The neighbours certainly believed the house belonged to Bond. In March 1992, several told journalist Eric Ellis that they saw Alan there frequently. One said it was ‘common knowledge’ that Bond owned it. Yet the woman who answered the door at number 14 told Ellis, ‘Mr Bond wants you to know that this is not his house and that he is a guest and is staying here only for a day’. Sydney Morning Herald, 12 March 1992, ‘Battling Bond in Chelsea hideaway’, Eric Ellis.

21. Exhibit in Bond bankruptcy examination, Federal Court, 3–5 May 1994.

10: Trouble With Harry

1. Henry Souttar Lodge, section 77C examination, 14 July 1993, p 62.

2. Royal Court of Jersey, Re: Alan Bond, a bankrupt. Transcript of evidence, John Geoffrey Davies p 9, p 57.

3. Lodge, ibid, pp 61–2, 68.

4. ibid, p 71. These various trusts either owned assets used by the Bond family, or were trustees of companies that owned such assets. Pianola owned a valuable property in London’s ultra-swish Belgrave Mews, worth £1.5 million, bought in the early 1980s. The Icarus Trust owned a house in Chelsea’s Selwood Place, bought in 1982 through Engetal Properties. Juniper Trust eventually owned Kirk Holdings, the key Jersey-based company that had at least $50 million pass through its bank accounts in the mid-1980s.

5. The letter was an exhibit at Bond’s bankruptcy examination, Federal Court, 3–5 May 1994.

6. Lodge, ibid, p 57.

7. Lodge, ibid, p 59.

8. The Australian, 4 March 1995, Paul Barry, ‘Bond’s money trail’. The Australian, 14 March 1995, letter from Harry Lodge:
      Paul Barry’s article, Bond’s Money Trail (The Weekend Australian Review, 4–5/3) would have readers believe that I have assisted Mr Alan Bond to conceal from his creditors assets which allegedly are now held on his behalf by a Mr Bollag, a knowledge either conveyed or imputed to my former firm, Parker & Parker, from which I retired in June 1989 at the age of 65.
      The article also seems to suggest that I failed to give a frank account of my involvement with entities administered in Jersey when examined by Mr Bond’s trustee in bankruptcy. I reject and strongly resent those allegations.
      Some 16 years ago during the period June 1979–July 1980 while I was managing the London office of my old firm I received instructions to arrange for the establishment of a number of offshore trusts and companies in the Channel Islands for various clients. Those trusts and companies were established with total propriety and in accordance with Jersey Law by chartered accountants Touche Ross and Jersey solicitors. The company Pianola and the Juniper Trust referred to in the article were established at this time.
      Later, and sometime after I left the London office and before October 1984, it appears the Icarus trust and associated companies were established by Touche Ross in Jersey but apart from at some time signing a consent to act as a person from whom the trustee could seek instructions I was not involved in the formation of these entities.
      Mr Barry refers to a meeting in Jersey on October 26, 1984. At that time I was on holiday in London with my wife. I travelled to Jersey in my private capacity and at my own expense for the purpose of renewing acquaintance with the Touche Ross senior partner, Geoffrey Davies, whom I had previously met in 1979/80. Mr Davies took the opportunity to inform me of various matters concerning mutual clients. I made some rough notes of our conversation. Intended as a reference should I need one in the future, I had no occasion to refer to those notes again. They formed part of a Parker & Parker file delivered by that firm to Ramsay some eight years later, on his appointment as trustee in 1992.
      I was not at any time after the establishments of these entities, involved with the administration of any of them and while I had been placed on lists of persons whom the trustees of the trusts could consult or seek instructions I was never at any time consulted or asked to give instructions. I have no knowledge whatsoever of any undisclosed Bond assets.
      I held several powers of attorney from Alan Bond, the first executed in 1969 and the last in 1983.
      From time to time I signed documents in exercise of that power when requested by Bond executives, on occasions when Bond was not personally available in Western Australia. I did not exercise the power at any time when I was out of WA.
      It concerns me greatly that quite a wrong impression may have been created by the author of the article by merging on the one hand my involvement in 1979/80 in the establishment of trusts or companies which may now be associated with Bollag with on the other hand, their subsequent administration over the intervening years, and the alleged location of undisclosed assets within them.
H.S. Lodge
Nedlands, WA

9. Filed in Federal Court, Bond bankruptcy, NB 1071 of 1992. The initials at the top of the page, HSL, indicate that the bill applies to work done by Harry Lodge or one of his juniors.

10. Filed in Federal Court, Bond bankruptcy, NB 1071 of 1992.

11. Filed in Federal Court, Bond bankruptcy, NB 1071 of 1992.

12. Filed in Federal Court, Bond bankruptcy, NB 1071 of 1992.

11: Zuggered

1. Exhibit in Bond’s bankruptcy examination, May 1994.

2. Selwood Place was messy anyway because the accountants at Touche Ross believed that Engetal Properties, the company that owned it, had been transferred to Bollag in 1991 and that some consideration had been paid. It would therefore have been especially hard for Ramsay to prove that Bond’s creditors were entitled to the proceeds.

3. The Jersey and UK banking documents for Kirk Holdings and Arbuthnot Latham show transfers to at least three numbered Swiss accounts. Other significant transfers were made to accounts at the Zuger Kantonal Bank held in the name of Juno Equities and Crasujo.

4. Bankers and fiduciaries were not obliged to report suspect transactions until April 1998. The money-laundering laws introduced in the early 1990s merely allowed them to.

5. This record would not have merely identified a discretionary trust in Liechtenstein or the British Virgin Islands, because the Swiss know far too much about hiding people’s money to swallow the line that personal fortunes are managed by trustees who can give the money away to any Tom, Dick or Harry. The record would have had to disclose the real beneficiary.
      In Liechtenstein it is still possible to open a numbered account without telling the bank who owns the money, so they can’t give your secrets away even if they want to. The same is true in Austria, much to the anger of the rest of Europe. The banking system there still has hundreds of millions of dollars in anonymous, numbered bank accounts, which can be opened by anyone who has been resident in the country for more than three months. The banks will even allow you to deposit cash in a suitcase, which you can then withdraw in the currency of your choice almost anywhere in the world, by quoting an account number and your PIN.

6. Only one man claims with any credibility to have broken through the Swiss banks’ defences, and that’s a Swiss investigator called Reiner Jacobi, who helped uncover the missing Marcos fortune. He apparently was leaked the information by an insider.
      The Swiss firm of investigators who contacted me offering to get documents and account details relating to Bond did not come back boasting of their success.

12: Lucky Jim

1. Who’s Who in Business in Australia 1992, Information Australia, Melbourne.

2. Sydney Morning Herald, 24 December 1994. ‘The Bankrupt’s friend is always on a Roll-er’, Ian Verrender.

3. In December 1997, a Sydney court was told how Terry and Colleen Halls of Bowral withdrew $55,000 ‘back pay’ from their Retravision shop and banked it in their children’s accounts. They said they were acting only on the advice of Jim Byrnes, who had motored down to the Southern Highlands from Sydney in his Bentley to talk to them. Byrnes was not called to give evidence. The Retravision business collapsed within weeks, the Halls’s two children were bankrupted, and the couple were convicted of fraud. Sunday Telegraph, 4 January 1998, ‘Fraud couple relied on ex-Bond adviser’, Warren Owens.

4. Affidavit of Melanie Baxter, 13 April 1992, Federal Court of Australia, NSW district, bankruptcy, P2951 of 1991. Re: James Warren Byrnes, debtor, ex parte NZI Securities Australia Ltd, creditor.

5. Cole J, 18 March 1992, NSW Supreme Court Commercial Division, 50335 of 1991.

6. Robert Canning swore an affidavit on 30 July 1991 (which was filed in the Federal Court on 15 August 1991) that Byrnes had ‘occasioned a violent physical assault’ upon him when he tried to serve a bankruptcy notice on Byrnes on 17 July 1991 (B2092 of 1991). Canning was a mild-mannered guy, 170 centimetres tall and no body builder. Jim Byrnes was a head taller. Byrnes allegedly grabbed Canning by the tie and shook him backwards and forwards, shouting, ‘Don’t come into my office … get out of my office’. Byrnes then sent him flying across the room where he fell over a couple of chairs. After that, Byrnes allegedly kicked him, grabbed him and propelled him backwards through the doorway. Canning went straight to North Sydney police station to report the incident, with tie askew, lip bleeding and various bruises, but declined to press charges.

7. Byrnes to author, 1999.

8. Daily Telegraph Mirror, 11 April 1992, ‘Page 13’.

9. Sunday Telegraph, 13 September 1992, Janise Beaumont, ‘Now jitter-bug Jackie’s really found her love’.

10. Daily Telegraph Mirror, 13 January 1993.

11. Daily Telegraph Mirror, 14 January 1993, Fiona Wingett.

12. Sydney Morning Herald, 24 December 1994, Ian Verrender.

13. Byrnes’s contract with Bond was seized by the AFP in September 1994. It was later filed in the Federal Court in Bond’s bankruptcy, NB 1071 of 1992.

14. Byrnes to author, 1999.

13: Brain Damage

1. Affidavit of Dr William Barclay, 15 February 1994, filed in Federal Court NB 1071 of 1992.

2. Ramsay affidavit, 3 December 1992, filed in Federal Court NB1071 of 1992.

3. Since 1992, bankrupts have been automatically discharged from bankruptcy after three years unless their trustee convinces a court that there are grounds for the bankruptcy to continue. After discharge, investigations by the trustee cease.

4. Woman’s Day, 10 May 1993, p 2, ‘Bondy bounces back’; and Lee Tate to author, 1999.

5. Quoted in affidavit of Karen Coleman, 3 February 1994, filed in Federal Court NB1071 of 1992.

6. Sun Herald, 12 December 1993, ‘The Diary’.

7. Affidavit of Dr WM Carroll, filed in Federal Court NB1071 of 1992, citing report of 11 June 1993 and letter to Bond’s lawyers, Galbally Fraser & Rolfe, 27 October 1993.

8. Affidavit of Tim Watson-Munro, 3 March 1994, filed in Federal Court NB1071 of 1992, citing report of 22 October 1993 and letter to Galbally Fraser & Rolfe 3 March 1994.

9. ibid.

10. Paul Barry, The Rise and Fall of Alan Bond, Transworld, Sydney, 1991 (paperback edition), pp 32–34.

11. ibid, p 38.

12. Letter from Alan Bond to Bob Ramsay, 24 July 1992, filed in Federal Court NB 1071 of 1992.

13. Western Australian Police Gazette, December 1952, cited in Sun Herald, 5 July 1998, ‘Bond as you’ve never seen him’, Jamie Fawcett. For conviction as an eighteen-year-old, see The Rise and Fall of Alan Bond, p 44.

14. Letter from John Saunders to Galbally Fraser & Rolfe, 29 October 1993, filed in Federal Court NB 1071 of 1992.

15. John Saunders gave evidence that Bond was suffering from minor brain damage and severe depression.

16. Ros Thomas to author, 1999.

17. Ros Thomas to author, 1999.

18. Affidavit of Dr William Barclay, 15 February 1994, filed in NB 1071 of 1992.

19. Affidavit of Michael Hunt, 3 February 1994, filed in NB 1071 of 1992.

20. Affidavit of Wally Knezevic, 3 February 1994, filed in NB 1071 of 1992.

21. Sydney Morning Herald, 10 February 1994, p 1, ‘Alan Bond felled by Skase syndrome’, Anne Lampe.

22. Affidavit of Dr Dennis Tannenbaum, 15 February 1994, filed in NB 1071 of 1992, citing reports to Galbally Fraser & Rolfe, 8 February 1994, 14 February 1994.

23. Barclay, ibid.

24. Barclay, ibid.

25. Woman’s Day, 14 March 1994, ‘Broken Bond on the mend’, Ian Dougall.

26. Australian Financial Review, 12 April 1994. ‘Bond IQ drops after heart surgery’, Brook Turner.

14: Remember Me?

1. Supreme Court of Victoria, 9 May 1978. Brooking sentenced a witness in the trial of a Victorian police officer to six months jail for contempt of court. The witness claimed to have forgotten whether the officer had bribed him. (See text in this chapter, p 164 and 143 CLR 162–189, High Court of Australia, 1978–1979, Keeley v Mr Justice Brooking.)

2. Sydney Morning Herald, 4 May 1994, p 1, ‘Memory fails a listless Bond’, Peter Smark.

3. Bond section 81 bankruptcy examination in Federal Court, 3–5 May 1994, NB 1071 of 1992. Transcript, p 248.

4. Bond, ibid, p 14.

5. Bond, ibid, p 25.

6. Bond, ibid, p 29.

7. Bond, ibid, p 31.

8. Bond, ibid, p 31.

9. Bond, ibid, p 41.

10. Bond, ibid, p 40.

11. Bond, ibid, p 132.

12. Bond, ibid, p 51.

13. Bond, ibid, p 157.

14. Bond, ibid, p 146.

15. Bond, ibid, p 70.

16. Bond, ibid, p 85.

17. Bond, ibid, p 100.

18. Professor Lesley Cala, neuro-radiologist at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, swore an affidavit for Bond’s lawyers on 28 February 1994 that Bond was indeed brain-damaged. Magistrate Ivan Brown reviewed her evidence during hearings about Bond’s state of health in June 1994. He said that he did not accept her findings about the extent of the damage.

19. Bond, ibid, p 123.

20. Four Corners, ABC TV, 9 May 1994.

21. Bond ibid, p 252.

22. Supreme Court of Victoria, 9 May 1978. Justice Brooking’s judgement was upheld by the High Court of Australia, which ruled: ‘A court is justified in convicting a witness of contempt for refusing to answer questions if it is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the witness, by falsely asserting an inability to remember, has evinced an intention to leave the questions unanswered’. 143 CLR 162–189, High Court of Australia, 1978–1979, Keeley v Mr Justice Brooking.
      Brooking had presided over the trial of a Victorian police officer accused of taking bribes from a certain Mr Keeley, who was the key witness for the prosecution. Keeley had given sworn evidence at the committal hearing that he had paid the bribe, but when it came to the trial he spent three days in the witness box swearing that he could neither recall his previous evidence nor the bribe itself. The policeman was acquitted, and Keeley was duly jailed for six months for contempt.

23. 1978–79 143 CLR, ibid, p 182.

24. Byrnes to author, 1999.

25. Cunningham to author, 1999.

26. Commonwealth Law Report, 1953, 90 CLR pp 573–582.

27. It wasn’t just Alan Bond who lost his memory. His younger son, Craig, who was examined by the Dallhold liquidator on oath in May 1994, appeared to have the same problem. In late 1988 and early 1989, Dallhold had borrowed $103 million in the space of six months from the company that ran the Queensland Nickel Project, MEQ. Craig had been a director of both companies at the relevant time. So what could he remember about this $103 million? Well, nothing at all, basically. He sort of remembered the number but didn’t know who had lent the money to Dallhold or where MEQ had got it from. Nor did he recall the important matter of the loan being interest-free. He might have known at the time, he said, but he had forgotten.
      These details were important, because some of MEQ’s $103 million really belonged to Standard Chartered Bank who had funded the nickel project, and Dallhold had been in such desperate straits that there was little prospect of it paying the money back. In fact, counsel for Dallhold, Stephen Robb QC, suggested that Craig’s conduct amounted to theft:

Q: I suggest that Dallhold in fact stole all this money from MEQ Nickel.

A: I wouldn’t agree with that.

Q: It had no means of repaying any of the money, and did not.

A: I could not agree with that.

Q: As a director of Dallhold in the period of December 1988 to the end of 1989 can you say what means were available to Dallhold to repay these loans?

A: I don’t recall.

28. Ramsay and his lawyers did try to persuade the Federal Court to resume Bond’s examination, on the basis that he had not answered questions satisfactorily, but Bond’s offer to settle with his creditors in December 1994 ended any such attempts.

15: Faking it

1. John Urch to author, 1999.

2. Lionel Berck to author, 1999.

3. John Urch to author, 1999.

4. The statement from Urch was taken by phone because he was in Sydney.

5. Daily Telegraph Magazine, London, January 1995, ‘The name’s Bond … Alan Bond’, Paul Spike.

6. Sydney Morning Herald, 19 July 1994, p 5, ‘Bond on the ball in fraud hearing’, Duncan Graham.

7. Bulletin, 13 June 1995, p 13, ‘Expert witnesses. Their pivotal role in the famous (and not-so-famous) cases’.

8. Letter from John Saunders to Galbally Fraser & Rolfe, 29 October 1993, filed in Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992.

9. Bulletin, ibid.

16: Money, Money, Money

1. Luke Atkins to author, August 1999. The loan of $10,000 to Atkins by Byrnes is confirmed by a letter from Atkins to James W Byrnes and Associates of 14 March 1994, seized in raids by the Australian Federal Police in September 1994 and obtained by Robert Ramsay via court orders in December 1994 and February 1995. In fact, much of what Atkins alleges in this chapter is backed by documents that the AFP seized.

2. Neil Cunningham to author, 1999.

3. Atkins to author, August 1999. Atkins and Asia Pacific advised Bond on deals like this for roughly nine months, from October 1993 to June 1994.

4. Australian Securities Commission records, February 1995. The fact that a company is struck off does not necessarily mean that it has gone bust. It has either ceased to do business or never started, but such a high proportion of failures is both rare and rarely blameless. One of Bryer’s companies (but not Bryer) was also prosecuted (unsuccessfully) for insider trading and was the subject of complaints from investors.

5. Records in the Isle of Man do not disclose Tri Kal’s true owners. Manx Corporate Services, which acts as the company’s registered office, told me in May 1999 that Tri Kal started life in 1986 as Keller Industries, at which time it owned the rights to a cement-lining process. Keller went bust in 1992 and was bought by ‘Gerry Sklar and others’, who changed its name to Tri Kal International. Sklar’s plan was apparently to use the company for property deals. But whether it found any was another matter. Tri Kal was struck off the Isle of Man companies register in December 1995 for failure to file annual returns.
      Keller Industries had been listed on the NASDAQ, the US stock market that deals primarily with high-tech stocks. This listing was suggested by Manx Corporate Services as a reason why Sklar and his partners wanted to buy the company, but it either lapsed before or very soon after the company changed hands. NASDAQ told the author in July 1999 they had never heard of Tri Kal.
      Apart from the deals mentioned in this chapter, Tri Kal was lined up to buy 25 per cent of St Bees Island and Craig Bond’s restaurant Papparazzi in Perth for US$7.5 million. Tri Kal was also expressing interest in the Emu Brewery and Swan Brewery sites in Perth and a huge block of land on the corner of Park and George streets in Sydney, which were all properties that Alan had dabbled with in the past. It also had plans to purchase a casino called Aladdins in Las Vegas for US$75 million and there are documents to show that its bankers in Sydney had written to a firm in New York to say they believed Tri Kal had the financial capacity to complete the deal. Whether the letter was genuine is another matter. Atkins alleges that several such letters were forgeries.
      Roger Bryer talked to the author about Tri Kal in January 2000. He said he had known Gerry Sklar for many years but couldn’t remember how he met him. He also told me that he introduced Tri Kal and Sklar to Bond because the company was looking for deals to finance. Sklar had told him that the company had the capacity to raise money.

6. Atkins to author, August 1999. Bond maintained to Robert Ramsay that he was merely a consultant to Tri Kal, yet no consulting fees were ever paid. Bryer also denies that he was a shareholder but says that he was to be paid a commission if any of Tri Kal’s deals came off, which he says they never did.

7. Atkins to author, August 1999.

8. Atkins to author, August 1999. Documents seized by the AFP support this. For example, Bond faxed Gerry Sklar in August 1994 to tell him what Tri Kal should say in a letter to a company in Scotland with whom they were negotiating an oil deal. Another fax in February 1994 from Bond to Jim Byrnes tells Byrnes how to arrange the paperwork for a transfer of Tri Kal shares.

9. Atkins to author, August 1999.

10. Atkins to author, August 1999.

11. Affidavit of Peter Menadue, 1 July 1994, filed in Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992; and Vladimir D’Jamirze to author, 1999.

12. Australian Securities Commission media release, 6 February 1995. Nicolai and Alick were also banned for three years. The ASC said their lack of fitness was displayed in their management of Curly International Pty Ltd and Antonov Airlines (Cargo & Services) Pty Ltd.

13. In January 2000, osmium-187 was being offered for sale on the Internet at US$58,000 a gram, so Vladimir D’Jamirze’s estimate of the sale price sounds too high. Documents seized by the Australian Federal Police in September 1994 do confirm that someone in Bond’s circle obtained a sample of osmium-187 for testing.

14. Roger Bryer told me in January 2000 that he knew nothing about the osmium 1-187 deal but did know about the violin deal. He says he did not travel to Zurich with Vladimir but met him there. He also says his role was to introduce the D’Jamirzes to various Swiss banks who might finance their transactions. Bryer was at a loss to explain how he had such contacts.

15. Roger Bryer explained his involvement with the Bond family in a letter to Bond’s lawyers, Galbally Fraser & Rolfe, dated 21 December 1994, the day before Ramsay obtained access to documents seized by the Australian Federal Police in their raids of September 1994. The letter, which was later filed in the Federal Court, included a history of dealings with the D’Jamirzes. He told me in January 2000 that he did not know what deals the companies were to be used for, but confirmed that the instructions came from Alan Bond.
      Bryer said that, after discussions with Bond, he had set up three companies in the British Virgin Islands to deal with the D’Jamirze transactions. These companies, called Arabesque Investments Ltd, Exxel Data Ltd and Broken Hill Services Ltd, were each given a bank account at Banque Indosuez in Zurich, into which a sum of $10,000 was deposited to cover company fees, hotel bills and airfares. Exxel Data Ltd had an additional account at Credit Suisse in Zurich. According to Bryer, the money came from one of Alan’s friends, Geoffrey Ogden, who stood surety for Bond on the Bell fraud charges in January 1995. Bryer said that both he and Ogden were to receive ‘a percentage of the profit’ on the deals that these three British Virgin Islands companies were involved in.
      Documents seized by the AFP showed that Arabesque entered a joint venture with Tri Kal and a Bond family company based in Australia called Hastings Finance, to buy Russian roubles. Hastings agreed to lend Arabesque US$1.65 million for thirty days.
      Bryer says that when the deals fell through, he closed the companies’ Swiss bank accounts and delivered all the documents, along with a record of expenses, to Alan’s house at Cottesloe. Yet when Bond was challenged by Ramsay in December 1994 about his dealings with the D’Jamirzes he said he had no idea who owned Arabesque or the other two companies. This is hard to believe, not least because his family company, Hastings Finance, was lending Arabesque so much money.

16. Robert Ramsay report to Alan Bond’s creditors, 24 January 1995, and attached schedule of documents seized by AFP, filed in Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992.

17. Tony Weatherald interview with Jamie Fawcett, 1996.

18. Atkins to author, August 1999.

19. Weatherald to Fawcett, 1996.

20. Greg Barnes interview with Neil Cribb, representing Alan Bond’s trustee in bankruptcy, Perth, 23 January 1995. Filed in Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992. Kitarski is Bart Kitarski, who worked with or for Bond at this time.
      The background to the SIDRO offer is as follows. Greg Barnes was a deal spotter in the mining industry with special knowledge of Eastern Europe, where he would make friends with academic geologists, research dusty archives, and unearth mineral deposits that could make millions of dollars for those who were smart enough to exploit them. For this reason, he regularly had Perth’s mining promoters knocking on his door for deals, as Alan Bond did in February 1993.
      Barnes had worked up a number of prospects at the time, of which the best was a deal that needed some $600 million in finance. It was a huge East German coal company that owned three power stations and had a twenty-five-year exclusive contract to supply coal and power to three East German states. A similar company in the West would have been worth between $1,400 million and $1,600 million, or so Barnes reckoned, and this one looked like it could be cleaned up to be worth a similar amount.
      Bond presented himself at the start as a consultant to a Swiss group that was interested in the deal, but he talked about it as though he planned to make a great deal more than a consultancy fee, telling Barnes, ‘If this coal deal works, I’m out of my shit’.
      Barnes was concerned about where the $600 million in finance would come from, and asked Bond whether he was sure he could find it. Bond assured him he could handle it, via his banking contacts in Switzerland, who would back him for the right deal. So who were these friends, Barnes was asked by Neil Cribb?

A: One was George Bollag … and other contacts and friends in banks in Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

Q: So your understanding was that Bond would be contacting George Bollag to arrange the necessary finance?

A: Yeah.

Like so many of Bond’s deals, the coal deal did not come off, because someone else snapped it up first. But Barnes met Bond to discuss a whole range of projects that included diamonds in Greenland and gold in Austria.

21. Robert Ramsay report to Alan Bond’s creditors, 24 January 1995, and attached schedule of documents seized by AFP, filed in Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992.

22. The Austrian gold-mining deal went the way of all the others that Bond was involved with at the time and the Perth investors lost their money. One of them, Steve Zielinski, who owned a businessmen’s lunch club known as Slik Chix, which featured naked waitresses and girls with feather dusters up their vaginas that diners were invited to remove with their teeth, had been so impressed with Bond’s enthusiasm that he had slung $100,000 into the project. And he was so angry that he had lost it that he told Bond he would go public by talking to Robert Ramsay’s Perth representative, Neil Cribb, and the Australian Federal Police, which he did. He told Cribb that Bond accused him of being a dog (or informer) and threatened to dob him in to the taxman.

Alan said ‘Watch your back’, sort of thing, and I said ‘I’m not worried about my back, mate’. He didn’t say it in those exact words … but it was like a threat. So if you find me in the Swan River, you’ll know where to look.

The Austrian gold-mining deal featured Broken Hill Services, one of the three British Virgin Islands companies set up by Bryer. This company also popped up after the deal fell through, when Bond tried to sell the same Austrian leases to a Perth mining company called Argosy Minerals. Peter Lloyd, the company’s managing director, told me in 1995 that Bond came to his office asking for a payment of $1 million if Argosy went ahead with the purchase of the leases. The cash (which Lloyd understood to be a fee for Alan Bond) was to be paid to Broken Hill Services, which suggests that Bond owned it.

23. Affidavit of Peter Menadue, 1 July 1994, filed in Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992.

24. Barnes to Cribb (Bob Ramsay’s Perth representative), January 1995.

25. Atkins to author, August 1999. For example, the AFP seized a letter from the Suisse Volksbank in Berne to Atkins’s Asia Pacific Group. This was a financial reference for another Liechtenstein company called Wira Establishment, which Weatherald identified as being a Bond/Bollag company. This said: ‘Our valued client is considering entering into a contract with your group. We confirm that they have the financial capacity to enter into contracts up to $50 million US’.

26. Neil Cunningham to author, 1999.

17: The Enforcer

1. Luke Atkins to author, 1999.

2. The shelf company became Whitsunday Island Developments Pty Ltd. In October 1995 it was put into liquidation, owing $4.7 million.

3. See, for example, Diana Bliss, section 77C examination, 24 June 1994, filed in Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992.

4. This account of Diana Bliss’s delivery of the hatbox containing $130,000 was given to the Australian Federal Police on 15 May 1995, and confirmed by Atkins to me in 1999. Banking documents confirm the deposit of the cash in St George Bank and the transfer to Singapore.

5. Atkins to author, 1999.

6. Tim Bristow to author, 1999.

7. Atkins to author, 1999.

8. Atkins to author, 1999.

9. The AFP’s search warrants were filed as exhibits in the Federal Court, VG 427 of 1994, as attachments to the affidavit of Andrew Roderick Fraser, 30 September 1994.

10. Atkins to author, 1999.

11. Atkins to author, 1999.

18: Operation Oxide

1. Letter from Western Australia’s Director of Public Prosecutions, John McKechnie, to Richard Moss, Inspector-General in Bankruptcy, Canberra, 20 October 1993.

2. Letter from Richard Moss to Allan Mills, Assistant Commissioner for Investigations, Australian Federal Police, Canberra, November 1993.

3. Australian letter of request to Swiss authorities for ‘Mutual Assistance in a Criminal Matter’, November 1991.

4. The Swiss police were always happy to deal with an official government-to-government request for assistance if a criminal matter was being investigated. They were not able to help Bob Ramsay in his civil investigations. But the 1991 request was unusual in that the Zuger Kantonal Bank seems to have surrendered the documents to Swiss police without triggering a legal challenge from Laurie Connell or Alan Bond. When the AFP used a similar request in 1994 to get documents from Switzerland, four years of legal challenges ensued.

5. The relevant law was the Bankruptcy Act 1966.

6. Request for Mutual Assistance in a Criminal Matter, made to Swiss authorities on 16 September 1994, p 17. Exhibit ARF2 in VG446 of 1997, Federal Court. The AFP also obtained phone records for Bollag’s London office, which showed that a large number of telephone calls were made from there to Western Australia.

7. Those who operate without one have no protection if a trustee runs off with their money. They can also find themselves in trouble if the trustee dies or goes insane, because they have no proof for the bank that their millions belong to them.
      Swiss fiduciaries like Bollag—who look after other people’s money—are typically quite careful. They like to be insured against professional negligence claims, and they can’t get insurance unless they tell the insurance company whose money they are looking after. For that reason, too, there is usually a contract in place.
      Bollag had certainly kept some papers relating to Bond’s affairs. He had already admitted to John Lord, the Dallhold liquidator, that he had retained documents for Crasujo, the company that had received US$2.8 million from Dallhold in 1987 (recorded by Dallhold as a loan to Alan Bond) and for Lindsey Trading Properties, the company that owned Upp Hall.

8. Request for Mutual Assistance in a Criminal Matter, p 2, filed in Federal Court, VG 446 of 1997. A supplementary letter was sent on 4 November 1994.

9. These banking instructions from Touche Ross were obtained by court order from the Allied Irish Banks in Jersey in 1993. They were an exhibit in Bond’s bankruptcy examination in May 1994, and filed in the Federal Court, NBV 1071 of 1992.

10. The request asked in general terms for all accounts that were conducted on Bond’s behalf, so there is no doubt that the Xavier documents would in fact have turned up in the trawl.
      The AFP also identified an account at the Ueberseebank in Zurich in the name of Andrew Benson, whose initials, coincidentally or otherwise, were AB, the same as Alan Bond’s. This account had received £541,000 in 1989 from Balmoral Securities, the Touche Ross service company in the Channel Islands that had sent money to Connell in December 1987. The financial wizards who prepared the Financial Tracing Report for Western Australia’s Royal Commission into WA Inc had traced a chunk of this money back to dividends paid to Alan Bond’s private company, Dallhold. The Ueberseebank told Swiss police that they had neither documents nor accounts that related to Bond.

11. This is made clear in the affidavit of Andrew Fraser, Federal Court, VG 446 of 1997.

19: Getting Off

1. Sydney Morning Herald, 24 December 1994, ‘The Bankrupt’s friend is always on a Roll-er’, Ian Verrender.

2. If the AFP discovered money belonging to Bond it would go to Australian taxpayers.

3. Ramsay letter to Alan Bond, 15 September 1994.

4. The Zug Cantonal Court order is referred to in the minutes of Bond’s Committee of Inspection meeting, 27 February 1995, filed in the Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992.

5. Dallhold report to creditors, December 1994. This eleven-page report filed in the Federal Court in the liquidation of Dallhold Investments, NG 3039 of 1991, sets out details of the claims against the Bond family and the prospects of their success.

6. John Lord and Stephen Robb believed they could show Dallhold was insolvent by May 1989 at the latest. This would disallow (or void) any gifts made by Alan Bond to his family after that date.
      On 1 May 1989, Bond Corporation Holdings was unable to pay its interim dividend on time because it didn’t have the cash. (Dallhold relied on these dividends to stay afloat.) On the same day, Bond Corporation was downgraded by Australian Ratings to a CCC credit rating (from which no company had ever recovered). During this month its shares were valued by Baring Securities Australia at minus $1.80 per share.

7. Between October 1988 and June 1989 Dallhold received roughly $160 million from Bell Resources and JN Taylor, which were ex-Holmes à Court companies that Bond controlled. Bond was convicted of fraud for taking the Bell cash and was sued by the liquidator of JN Taylor for removing money from that company.
      A further $100 million was channelled into Dallhold’s coffers from MEQ Nickel, a Dallhold subsidiary that had pledged the money to Standard Chartered Bank under a loan agreement.

8. Dallhold report to creditors, December 1994, Federal Court, NG 3039 of 1991. This sets out the details of Bond’s proposal to settle his $519 million worth of debts to the company.

9. Bankrupt Estate of Alan Bond, Report to Creditors, 8 December 1994, filed in Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992.

10. ibid.

11. Dallhold report to creditors, December 1994.

12. Bankrupt Estate of Alan Bond, Report to Creditors, 8 December 1994.

13. Ramsay had won the legal battle over Bond’s super fund, which had produced around $2.7 million for creditors, but his offshore investigations had produced no return. By the end of 1994, Bond’s bankruptcy had cost $3.5 million, of which nearly $2 million had gone in legal costs. Most of this had been paid by Tricontinental, who had paid $2.16 million, and the Hongkong Bank, who had paid $841,000. The National Australia Bank and AGC had put up $75,000 between them. Affidavit of Robert Ramsay, 8 December 1994, Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992.

14. Sydney Morning Herald, 20 December 1994, p 1, ‘Bond clears the decks for a comeback’, Colleen Ryan. Bond needed the backing of more than half of the creditors who voted and more than three-quarters of the $519 million debts by value.

15. ibid.

16. Sydney Morning Herald, 24 December 1994, ‘The Bankrupt’s friend is always on a Roll-er’, Ian Verrender.

17. In mid-November, Ramsay had persuaded George Caddy, the Official Receiver for New South Wales, to serve the AFP with orders to hand over all the material they had obtained from Bond in the September raids. Within a week, the AFP had sent all the documents to Caddy’s office in Sydney and Ramsay had arranged to inspect them. But before this examination could take place, Bond’s lawyers had applied for an injunction.
      The orders were made under section 77C, which was introduced in 1991 to strengthen the power of bankruptcy trustees to get hold of documents. The law required the Official Receiver to issue the orders.

18. Comments by Sheppard J in making orders in Federal Court in Sydney, 22 December 1994, that Bond give details of telephone calls made from the Sheraton Wentworth hotel between March and May 1994, and that he consent to the handover to Ramsay of documents seized from his house by the AFP in September 1994. Reported in The Australian, 23 December 1994, Sally Jackson.

20: Free

1. The creditor was Gerry Cavanagh, credit controller of Western International Travel, part of the West Australian Newspapers Group. This is verbatim from Cavanagh’s file note of the meeting, made shortly after Bond’s departure.

2. West Australian, 27 December 1994, p 1, Mark Drummond, ‘Bond debunks Bollag “myth”’.

3. The quotes are from a letter written by Richard Moss, Australia’s Inspector-General in Bankruptcy, to Allan Mills, Assistant Commissioner for Investigations, Australian Federal Police, Canberra, November 1993.

4. West Australian, 20 January 1995, p 1, ‘DPP won’t give up Bond secrets’, Margot Lang and Mark Drummond.

5. West Australian, 23 January 1995, p 1, ‘Bond investigator in papers backflip’, Mark Drummond and Anne Lampe.

6. Report to Creditors on the Bankrupt Estate of Alan Bond, 24 January 1995, filed in Federal Court, NB 1071 of 1992.

7. Parker & Parker letter from Steven Paterniti to Bond’s creditors, 27 January 1995. Paterniti’s comments on Ramsay’s report were carried in the West Australian, 26 January 1995, p 1, ‘New blow to Bond bankruptcy plan’, Mark Drummond.

8. This is verbatim from Cavanagh’s file note of the meeting, made shortly after Bond’s visit. The basis of Bond’s argument that Western International Travel should vote ‘Yes’ was a letter from Bond to his old colleague, David Aspinall, then a director of the company, dated 19 December 1991, and signed by both men. In this letter Bond recited the terms of an agreement between him and Western International Travel by which the company would accept a payment of $7,000 from Bond in settlement of a debt of $54,397.79 and vote for a Part X arrangement under the Bankruptcy Act 1966, if one was proposed.
      However, the compromise that Bond was proposing in January 1995 was not a Part X arrangement, and Western International Travel’s lawyers did not consider that the letter bound them to vote for it.

9. Out of the $3.25 million paid by the Bond family, $2.25 million was owed to the Hongkong Bank and Tricontinental, who had funded the trustee’s investigations. This left roughly $1 million for distribution to creditors, who were owed $599 million in total.

10. The Australian Taxation Office had presumably read Ramsay’s November 1994 report to creditors which pointed out that in the six years before his bankruptcy Bond had declared income of $2.5 million on his tax returns, yet had managed to give $32.5 million to his family and friends. After the annulment of Bond’s bankruptcy, Treasurer Ralph Willis revealed that Bond was nearly given the chance to claim a further $20 million of tax losses on his debts. A tax official realised this just in time and the loophole was closed to prevent it happening.

11. Ramsay did not retire. In 1999 he was still working as a consultant to Bird Cameron.

12. Sydney Morning Herald, 28 February 1995, Colleen Ryan.

13. There is little reason to think that the claim against the Queensland Government would have succeeded. The Dallhold liquidator, John Lord, did not even bother to pursue it. Even if it had succeeded, for Bond’s sums to be right, the Greenvale Nickel Project would have needed to sell for around $800 million more than the $330 million it actually fetched.

14. The SULA banks (which sold the Greenvale Nickel Project for $330 million and pocketed all the money) lost heavily. They lent Bond US$335 million in 1990, and did not receive a cent in interest.
      The $5 billion figure for the Bond Group’s total losses includes $519 million for Dallhold, $600 million for Bond’s bankrupt estate and a final figure of $3.7 billion for Bond Corporation Holdings Ltd.

15. Sydney Morning Herald, 1 March 1995, Letters to the Editor.

16. The Australian, 1 March 1995, ‘Bankrupt laws leave creditors in the lurch’, Henry Bosch.

17. Business Review Weekly, 13 March 1995, ‘How Bond beat bankruptcy’, Philip Rennie.

21: Wedded Bliss

1. Australian Securities Commission statement announcing delivery of unpublished report from John Sulan QC.

2. A time limit of five years normally applies to bringing charges under the Companies Code. This time limit expired in February 1994. Leave was granted by acting Attorney General Duncan Kerr to bring charges outside this period.

3. Tim Phillipps to author, April 1999.

4. West Australian, 16 January 1995, p 1, ‘Push to recall Bond men’, Margot Lang.

5. An old Polish pre-communist extradition treaty existed, but no one had attempted to use it with another Australian fugitive, Abe Goldberg, who went bankrupt in July 1990 owing $320 million and was wanted on a string of fraud charges. The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions did attempt to use the treaty to get Oates back to face trial, and attempts to extradite him were still under way in early 2000.
      Peter Mitchell returned to Australia of his own accord, pleaded guilty at trial, was sentenced to four years in jail and freed in late 1999.
      Peter Beckwith, Bond Corporation’s managing director, who also took a key role in the Bell Resources cash strip, died in 1990.

6. Weekend Australian, 4–5 March 1995, p 4, ‘Bond for trial over picture purchase’, Colleen Egan.

7. ibid.

8. New Weekly, 21 October 1993, p 24, ‘I love him … I always will’, Suzanne Monks.

9. Good Weekend, 29 March 1997, p 16, ‘The show must go on’, Jane Cadzow.

10. Sydney Morning Herald, 17 April 1995, p 5, ‘For richer, for poorer, Bond embarks on a life of wedded bliss’, John Huxley.

11. Hello!, 29 April 1995, p 12, ‘Australian entrepreneur Alan Bond marries theatre producer Diana Bliss’, Interviewer, Prue MacSween.

12. ibid.

13. Bond v Pacific Publications, No 11213 of 1995, NSW Supreme Court. Amended Summons, 10 April 1995. See also Affidavit of Jim Byrnes, 12 April 1995.

14. Daily Telegraph, 30 March 1992, ‘Page Thirteen’, Fiona Wingett.

15. New Idea, 22 April 1995, p 6, ‘Bond Case, Threats and Intimidation’, Fiona Wingett. Also Pam Lesmond to author, 1999.

16. Daily Telegraph, 7 April 1995, p 3, ‘Bond stops intimate article on “sex life”’, Naomi Toy.

17. Bond v Pacific Publications, No 11213 of 1995, NSW Supreme Court. Amended Summons, 10 April 1995.

18. New Idea, 22 April 1995, pp 6–7, ‘Bondy and me. The story Alan Bond tried to ban’.

19. Cecelie Turner, signed statement to Australian Federal Police, June 1995.

22: Guilty

1. Court of Petty Sessions, Perth, WA, complaint nos: 349–355/9, between Timothy Graham Phillipps and Alan Bond, before Ronald J. Gething S.M. Reasons for decision of preliminary hearing, 17 January 1996.

2. Tim Phillipps to author, 1999.

3. ibid.

4. David Michael to author, 1999.

5. The purchase of the Manet was effected by buying the leasing company that owned it. By mid-1988, the residual on the lease was $1.6 million. Dallhold paid more than this because two lease payments were outstanding and because the owners of the leasing company, Macquarie Bank, demanded a premium for selling.

6. The ABC’s Four Corners program brought these bogus profits to light in March 1989. In early 2000, Arthur Andersen & Co was still being sued for negligence by the liquidator of Bond Corporation Holdings Ltd, which by this time had been renamed Southern Equities Corporation Ltd.

7. The committee also examined several other problems thrown up by the audit.

8. WA District Court, charge 35568–35571 of 1993, ASC v Alan Bond, 20 August 1996, Justice Antoinette Kennedy, Sentencing Remarks for Alan Bond.

9. ibid.

10. ABC TV, Australian Story, 21 February 1997, ‘The Parson’s Daughter’, produced by Wendy Page.

11. Sunday Times, 22 December 1996, pp 1–2, ‘Jailbird Bond’s barbecue set’.

12. ibid.

13. ibid.

14. WA Supreme Court, ASC v Bond, 5 February 1997, Murray J, Remarks on sentencing.

15. Sun Herald, 16 February 1997, p 23, ‘Last straw for Bond’, Candace Sutton.

23: Zuggered Again

1. In late 1999 the Swiss Federal Court finally ruled that the papers could be sent back to the NCA in Melbourne.

2. Parliamentary Joint Committee on National Crime Authority, April 1998.

3. Alan Bond, examination under section 81 of Bankruptcy Act 1966, Federal Court, 3 May 1994, p 48.

4. West Australian, 27 December 1994, p 1, Mark Drummond, ‘Bond debunks Bollag “myth”’.

5. Federal Court of Australia, VG 446 of 1997, Alan Bond and others v Andrew Tuohy and others, Application for an order of review under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977.

6. Federal Court of Australia, VG 601 of 1995, Alan Bond v Michael Rozenes and others.

7. Federal Court of Australia, VG 446 of 1997, Jurg Bollag and Alan Bond v The Attorney-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, the Director of Public Prosecutions for the Commonwealth of Australia, the Commissioner, Australian Federal Police; Reasons for judgment, Merkel J, 30 October 1997.

8. Hadgkiss, speech to ITSA National Bankruptcy Conference, Melbourne, November 1998.

9. In 1998 Benazir Bhutto and her husband Ali Zardari were convicted of corruption by a Pakistani court, fined US$5.3 million and sentenced to five years in jail. The court found they had taken bribes from foreign companies in exchange for granting contracts and had lied comprehensively about their income and assets to the Pakistani tax authorities. Benazir Bhutto had declared an annual income of only $42,000 in 1996 and paid just $5,000 in tax.
      The Pakistani Government employed American investigators Kroll Associates to investigate the case in Switzerland. Kroll paid US$1 million for documents apparently stolen from Jens Schlegelmilch’s office. These were important evidence and no doubt also helped persuade the lawyer to talk.

10. Australian Financial Review, 24–25 October 1998, p 3, ‘AFP gives up Bond chase’, Bill Pheasant.

24: Cook’s Tour

1. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, Amended Statement of Claim, 19 October 1997, para 132. Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (SECL) was formerly Bond Corporation Holdings Ltd. The case is being heard in South Australia because Richard England, the Bond Corporation Holdings liquidator, is based in Adelaide.

2. ibid, para 223.1.1–223.1.2.

3. ibid, para 81.

4. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, Further Amended Statement of Claim, 19 October 1999, para 43. (Southern Equities Corporation Ltd— SECL—was formerly Bond Corporation Holdings Ltd.)
      In all, fourteen artworks were ‘sold’ to Way. It is not clear why Bond selected them. There were many more valuable pieces that he could have chosen from his collection, which was valued at $146 million, but the Captain Cook was a special favourite, and the others constituted the bulk of the pictures owned by Bond Corporation Holdings (as opposed to Dallhold). The majority were hanging in Dallhold’s offices and gallery on the top three floors of the Bond tower, while one was at Alan’s home in Dalkeith and another was on his yacht Southern Cross II.

5. Even though she wasn’t quite sure what was happening, Diana de Bussy had severe misgivings about what she was being asked to do, but she was new on the scene at Bond Corp and was in no position to argue. Until ten months earlier, she had been running a small PR agency in the Scottish highlands, where she had imagined that being curator of Bond’s art collection would be the job of a lifetime. Soon after this incident, however, she would decide she could stand it no more.
      It was not just the ‘sale’ to Way that was bothering her. A few weeks earlier she had arranged for two other prize pictures in the Bond collection to be taken down from the walls of Bond’s offices and packed off to Jurg Bollag in Switzerland. These two paintings, Portrait of Matthew Flinders by the French artist Antoine Toussaint de Chazal and Natives in the Eucalypt Forest by the colonial artist John Glover, which were worth at least $1.5 million between them, had been bought for Alan in the early 1980s by his art dealer Angela Nevill and invoiced to his Jersey company Kirk Holdings. Yet Bollag had written to Bond in early December 1989 claiming they had been on loan.

6. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, Further Amended Statement of Claim, 19 October, para 88.2.

7. Examination of Angela Nevill, London, 19 August 1996, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation (in liquidation). Documents obtained by the author from the Isle of Man show that Firstmark was set up on 22 June 1989 in the Isle of Man by the same company agent that had established Metal Traders for Bollag in 1986. Its registered office was at Sovereign House, St Johns, a small village on the island. Its shares were held by Bollag’s JF Consulting (formerly Crasujo) and it was administered by Bollag through Jersey. The company was struck off on 17 June 1997 for not filing annual returns to the Isle of Man authorities.

8. ibid, p 11.

9. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, Further Amended Statement of Claim, 19 October 1999, para 97.3.

10. ibid, para 122.

11. National Gallery of Australia archives: file note from August 1993.

12. National Gallery of Australia archives: submission for acquisition of Captain Cook, 30 August 1993.

13. Australian Financial Review, 3 August 1993, ‘$1.5 million agreed for Cook portrait’, Terry Ingram.

14. National Gallery of Australia archives: letter from Robert Bleakley, managing director, Sotheby’s Australia, to Michael Lloyd, Assistant Director, Collections, National Gallery of Australia, 31 August 1993.

15. Examination of Robert Bleakley, Adelaide, 2 August 1996, pp 26–28, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993. Bleakley was shown newspaper articles about the sale of the Bond Corp paintings to George Way published in the West Australian on 21 and 25 May 1992. He admitted that he had read them and passed them on to Angela Nevill.

16. ibid, pp 77–78.

17. Australian Financial Review, 3 August 1993, ‘$1.5 million agreed for Cook portrait’, Terry Ingram.

18. Sydney Morning Herald, 29 July 1993, p 1, ‘Switzerland discovers our missing Captain Cook’, Ava Hubble. Hubble reported: ‘Mr Bleakley said he did not know the identity of the buyer, and he refused to name the agent he is negotiating with. But he said the agent is not the Switzerland-based businessman Mr Jurg Bollag’.
      Bollag’s role in Bond’s offshore finances and in ‘lending’ other valuable paintings to Bond had been exposed on ABC TV’s Four Corners, ‘Rich Man, Poor Man’, 26 July 1993.

19. There have been repeated rumours about the weird and wonderful things hidden in the Freilager, some of which are possibly true. On one occasion, the Zurich District Attorney even rushed down with a warrant to search for $2 billion worth of looted Japanese gold, which was enough to fill a couple of rail cars, and sealed off a large section of the facility, only to find nothing.

20. Lionel Bowen in conversation with author, 1999.

21. Peter Lundy in conversation with author, 1999, and advice given by Peter Lundy, now in National Gallery of Australia archives.

25: Gotcha

1. Examination of Craig Bond, 9 April 1997, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation). Bond was being asked about money transfers from a Jersey bank account to his companies in Perth. Craig prefaced most of his answers with the word ‘Privilege’ to ensure that they could not be used against him in any future prosecution.

2. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, Further Amended Statement of Claim, 19 October 1999, paras 152–158.

3. ibid, para 166.

4. ibid, para 151A.

5. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, para 151A1/2.

6. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, Further Amended Statement of Claim, 19 October 1999, paras 171, 175, 180.

7. Examination of Angela Nevill, 19 August 1996, p 62, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation). The same police raiding party descended on Upp Hall later on 19 March 1996. They were let in by the caretaker and gathered another twenty-two boxes of documents. Soon afterwards, Bollag’s office in Chelsea was also turned over, as was his secretary’s flat in Ealing. His London lawyers, Franks Charlesly, meanwhile, were trusted to hand over their files without coercion.

8. The Bond Corp liquidator filed the action via a protective writ on 2 January 1996, even though the evidence had not been fully gathered, to avoid being caught by the Limitation of Actions Act, which set a time limit for the filing of legal claims.

9. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, affidavit of Mark Hoffmann, 20 February 1997.

10. Examination of Craig Bond, Adelaide, 29 March 1996, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation). Craig Bond was told that he had to answer questions, even if he felt he might incriminate himself, but that his answers could not be used against him in later criminal proceedings if he prefaced them with the word ‘Privilege’.

11. Examination of Craig Bond, 9 April 1997, p 382, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation).

12. ibid.

13. Examination of Nancy Lake, Nassau, Bahamas, 23 August 1996, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation).

14. The ‘naval portrait’ was the Portrait of Matthew Flinders by Antoine de Toussaint Chazal. This had been bought by Alan Bond’s Jersey company Kirk Holdings in December 1987, so it had belonged (and probably still belonged) to Alan Bond himself. Its history and fate are dealt with in Chapter 26.

15. Examination of Craig Bond, 9 April 1997, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation). The evidence relating to money transfers from SHC is also set out in para 187 of the liquidator’s statement of claim.

16. ibid.

17. ibid. The evidence is also recited in paras 187, 205 and 206 of the statement of claim.

18. ibid. The letter to Lake is quoted in para 162 of the statement of claim.

19. Craig’s letter to Lake is quoted in para 168 of the statement of claim.

20. Examination of Craig Bond, 9 April 1997, 2516 of 1993.

21. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, Affidavit of Mark Hoffmann, 20 February 1997; Reasons of Justice Debelle, 21 February 1997. Affidavit of Richard Green, 19 February 1997; reasons of Judge Bowen Pain, 10 February 1997, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation).

22. Supreme Court of South Australia, Bond v England, Judgement of Justice Debelle, 1 August 1997. Bond and Caboche v England, Judgement of Justice Lander, 23 October 1997. Details of the hearing at Karnet Prison Farm and legal manoeuvrings are disclosed in these two judgements.

23. Examination of Alan Bond, Adelaide, 24 November 1997, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation).

24. ibid, p 52.

25. This evidence is recited in the statement of claim, paras 43, 127.

26. Examination of Alan Bond, Adelaide, 24 November 1997, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation).

27. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, Further Amended Statement of Claim, October 1999, para 122. Also Nevill examination, 19 August 1996, pp 17–18.

28. ibid, para 122. Also Nevill examination, 19 August 1996, pp 28–30.

29. ibid, para 122. Also Nevill examination, 19 August 1996, pp 39–43. Nevill stated on oath: ‘I told Sir Evelyn 1.) that Mount Zero was formerly in the Alan Bond collection, 2.) Mount Zero was being sold by entities related to the Bond family’. She said she had told him the same things about the two paintings by Bull.

30. Examination of Angela Nevill, 19 August 1996, p 30, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation).

31. Examination of Robert Bleakley, Adelaide, 2 August 1996, pp 83–85, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation).

26: Free Again

1. The Australian Women’s Weekly, April 2000, ‘Alan Bond home free’, Carol George, p 16.

2. The Australian Women’s Weekly later published the list of charities that the money was donated to.

3. Daily Telegraph, 10 March 2000, pp 1, 6, ‘Pure Bliss, Alan Bond walks to freedom with wife Diana and $70 million’, Mark Russell.

4. Sydney Morning Herald, 10 March 2000, p 1, ‘One day in jail for every stolen million’, Paul Barry.

5. Australian Women’s Weekly, April 2000, ‘Alan Bond home free’, Carol George, p 16.

6. Various press reports in Australia and the UK had suggested that the Captain Cook had been seized by the Serious Fraud Office in March 1996 during its raid on Nevill Keating Pictures, but these had always been wide of the mark.

7. The Freycinet collection was bought by Angela Nevill in June 1985 for $1.55 million from a Sydney art dealer called Derek McConnell. It was invoiced to Alan’s Jersey company Kirk Holdings, but Nevill made it absolutely clear in a letter to McConnell whom she was buying it for.

I am writing to confirm the purchase of the Freycinet Collection from you as agents for the vendor, Mr David L. Bremer. We are purchasing it on behalf of Mr Alan Bond.

From the outset, it was a closely guarded secret that Bond had bought it, possibly because the works had once been stolen from a French museum. Angela Nevill referred to the collection in code when discussing the possibility of bringing it to Australia for exhibition, and Bond’s art curator Diana de Bussy never set eyes on it, because it remained in the UK.
      In December 1989, a memo from Dallhold’s managing director Michael Cross recorded that the collection was held offshore. When Dallhold’s liquidator John Lord inquired about it in 1991 he was told by Nevill that it belonged to Alan (and not the company). Yet Bond failed to declare it as a personal asset when he went bankrupt in April 1992 and Lord, amazingly, failed to tell Bond’s bankruptcy trustee, Bob Ramsay, about its existence.

8. Examination of Angela Nevill, 19 August 1996, pp 6–7. Natives in the Eucalypt Forest is a magnificent example of John Glover’s work, now worth around $1 million. After its disappearance in 1989 its whereabouts remained a mystery until Angela Nevill was examined on oath in August 1996 by the Bond Corp liquidator. Nevill revealed she had sent the painting back to Australia in 1992, shortly before Bond was declared bankrupt, to be sold for $400,000 to a Sydney psychotherapist, John Buttsworth. The deal was done through Robert Bleakley, then of Sotheby’s, who shared the $40,000 commission with Nevill. According to Nevill, Bleakley was made aware that the painting was from the Alan Bond collection and that someone connected with Bond was selling it, but he almost certainly failed to pass this information on to the purchaser. Buttsworth, who was struck off in 1991 for having an affair with a patient, was unwilling to discuss the matter when contacted by the author.
      The Portrait of Matthew Flinders was judged by the Supreme Court of South Australia in September 2000 to be an asset of Bond Corporation, to whom the court was told it had been transferred in 1989.
      Some of the other 13 missing paintings have also been traced. Nicholas Chevalier’s Mount Zero and Knud Bull’s View of Hobart Town and View of Boa Vista were snapped up by Sir Evelyn de Rothschild for $350,000 roughly two years after Bond was made bankrupt. Angela Nevill, who was a family friend of Sir Evelyn, gave sworn evidence in August 1996 that she told him the paintings were from the Alan Bond Collection and someone close to Bond was selling them.
      Sir Russell Drysdale’s famous George Ross of Mullengandra was sold in 1992 for $210,000 to the Australian TV game show millionaire Reg Grundy and now hangs in his London home.
      John Peter Russell’s Antibes, Alpes Maritimes was bought by a Federal Court judge to hang on the walls of his Sydney chambers. Justice John Lockhart, now retired, paid $130,000 for it several months after Bond went bankrupt.
      Justice Lockhart and Reg Grundy both bought their paintings via Robert Bleakley, then of Sotheby’s Australia, without knowing their history or the identity of the vendor. According to Nevill’s sworn evidence and Bleakley’s own admission on oath, Bleakley knew that someone close to Bond was selling the artworks, but omitted to pass this crucial information on to the buyers. Sotheby’s, meanwhile, entered into complicated back-to-back contracts that involved Nevill Keating Pictures buying the pictures from the vendor, then selling them to Sotheby’s, who then sold them on to Grundy and Lockhart.
      In August 1996, Robert Bleakley was examined on oath about the sale of these Bond Corp paintings and was asked in particular about the sale of Antibes to Justice Lockhart.

Q: Did you explain to your client about the George Way history?

A: No I didn’t …

Q: What do you think your client would have done if you had told your client this … ‘Look, Mr Lockhart, I need to disclose this to you: the price is very good at $130,000, it is a great price, but what you have to understand is that this was a Bond art collection painting and it was sold out of the Bond company to somebody called George Way, a horse trainer in Western Australia in highly suspicious circumstances … Since then I have been told by Angela Nevill who has dealt with Bond, seen him in gaol, and knows him pretty well, that it has been through a number of companies in Europe. I don’t know who they are and what it means, but I think you should know that before you pay $130,000.’ Did you tell your client that?

A: No, I did not.

Q: What do you think he would have done if you had told him that.

A: As I was about to say earlier, I felt that any association with Bond tainted a work.

Q: What do you think he would have done?

A: I imagine that he would [have] probably either felt discouraged to pursue the purchase or he would have offered a much lower price.

As a judge in the Federal Court, Lockhart would have been quite horrified to find that he was buying a painting from a notorious bankrupt who was already being accused of concealing assets from his creditors. He would have been even more worried had he known where his money may have ended up, for according to the liquidator’s statement of claim, the $340,000 paid to Sotheby’s by Lockhart and Reg Grundy found its way via Nevill Keating Pictures to Bond’s secret money box at the Private Trust Bank in Liechtenstein, where it was paid into an account in the name of SIDRO Anstalt.
      According to the liquidator’s statement of claim, the $350,000 paid by de Rothschild to Angela Nevill for the three Bond Corp paintings he purchased was sent to the client account of Jurg Bollag’s London lawyers. On all past performance, it seems more than likely that this money also ended up with Alan Bond. Naturally, no one mentioned this to the innocent purchasers.

9. Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 2000, p 1, ‘Bond’s big kickstart’; 23 March 2000, p 13, ‘On the Bond money-go-round’, Paul Barry.

10. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation and others v Alan Bond and others, Affidavit of Jason Karas, 10 February 2000.

11. In September 1994 the AFP seized documents from Alan’s house in Cottesloe which showed that SIDRO Anstalt had transferred $1.7 million from the Private Trust Bank in Liechtenstein to the Swiss Bank Corporation in Lausanne. The evidence suggests that the transfer was linked to one of the deals that Alan was trying to do with the D’Jamirze brothers.

12. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation and others v Alan Bond and others, Affidavit of Jason Karas, 1 September 1999; also Further Amended Statement of Claim, 19 October 1999, paras 188A-188L.

13. Examination of Craig Bond, 9 April 1997, Supreme Court of South Australia, 2516 of 1993, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd (in liquidation).

14. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, Affidavit of Jason Karas, 10 February 2000, para 18–18.9.

15. ibid, paras 26, 28–30.

16. ibid, paras 33, 34.

17. ibid, paras 12.2, 12.3, 47.2.1.

18. ibid, paras 3.5, 3.6.

19. ibid, para 3.7.

20. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 2000, p 4, ‘Bond’s lost Captain Cook stranded without a sale’; 27 September 2000, p 4, ‘Flinders is homeward bound’; 8 August 2000, p 3, ‘Captain Cook about to return to Australia’, Paul Barry.

21. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation and others v Alan Bond and others, Judgement of the Honourable Justice Debelle, 14 September 2000, p 12.

22. Roughly $6 million had already been collected from the sale of the Cook and Flinders portraits, so the Bond Corp liquidator received around $18 million in total, to satisfy the original claim plus interest and costs.

23. Australian Financial Review, 28 March 2001, p 33, ‘Paying the full Bond’, Mark Drummond.

24. Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation and others v Alan Bond and others, Application to Amend Statement of Claim, 16 March 2001, paras 64A8.3-64A8.7 and 64A10.1-64A10.8.

25. Sydney Morning Herald, 30 September 2000, ‘The art of dealing’, Paul Barry.

26. Kelvin Kenney to author, March 2000.

27: In Exile

1. Sunday Telegraph, London, 17 September 2000, Damian Reece and Mary Fagan.

2. Sunday Herald Sun, 1 April 2001, pp 1, 3, ‘Trust me I’m Alan Bond’, Helen McCabe and Christine Middap.

3. Sunday Telegraph, ibid.

4. Payday Lending, A report to the Minister for Fair Trading, Queensland Government, August 2000.

28: Facing the Music

1. Senator Murray, Senate, 19 November 1997, pp 8988–89.

2. There is no way of knowing from publicly available documents whether money changed hands between the Bonds and their former Swiss landlord when the handover of Upp Hall took place in 1995, but John Bond’s testimony to the South Australian Supreme Court in late 1999 suggests it did not. He stated that a family company had ‘acquired the leasehold interest from Dallhold in exchange for a payment of $1.5 million’. He went on to say that the same company ‘acquired, at the same time, the freehold interest in Upp Hall Estate from Lindsey Trading Properties Inc as part of the overall transaction’.
      Note the words ‘as part of the overall transaction’ and the lack of mention of any money, least of all $11 million, changing hands between the Bonds and Bollag. But even if there had been such a payment, it would probably mean very little, given the way in which Bollag had looked after Bond’s money since the mid-1980s.
      Supreme Court of South Australia, 113 of 1996, Southern Equities Corporation Ltd and others v Alan Bond and others, defence of John Bond, paras 151A.1, 151A.2.

3. Business Review Weekly, 13 March 1995, ‘How Bond beat bankruptcy’, Philip Rennie.

4. Until the 1960s, the bankruptcy laws in Australia employed the doctrine of ‘reputed ownership’, which ruled that if someone had the use of property and appeared to own it, then a court was entitled to conclude that the person did own it. This might have proved useful for attacking trusts, but it was repealed because it caused problems with goods acquired on hire-purchase agreements.

5. On 20 October 1994, the Federal Court in Perth upheld an appeal by Alan Bond against an earlier Federal Court decision (and a previous determination by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal) that gifts of more than $700,000 made to Bond by his family and friends should be classified as income. The law was redrafted in 1996 and now works as parliament intended.

6. The start of the bankruptcy is defined as the first act of bankruptcy. This might, for example, be the issue of a creditors’ petition, and could be months before the actual bankruptcy date.

7. Conversation with author, May 1999.

8. ibid.

9. Conversation with author, May 1999.

10. These changes are recommended by David J Kerr, an insolvency practitioner with Lord & Brown in Sydney, in his excellent paper, ‘Dealing with the well-advised bankrupt’, in New directions in bankruptcy, December 1999, volume 9, no. 4, published by the Insolvency & Trustee Service Australia.

11. Sydney Morning Herald editorial, 1 March 1995, ‘Bankruptcy and Fairness’.

12. Senator Murray, Senate, 19 November 1997, pp 8988–89.

13. Andrew Fraser was charged in September 1999 with trafficking, using and possessing cocaine. In November 1999 he was further charged with being knowingly concerned with the importation of 5.5 kilograms of cocaine. He admitted on radio that he had had a $100,000-a-year drug habit. Fraser was charged after twenty-two police raided his St Kilda home at 3.00am. His chambers and mobile phone had been bugged for more than a month. Herald Sun, 16 September 1999, p 3, ‘Jeweller on drug charge’, Sarah Pellegrini; Herald Sun, 10 November 1999, p 11, ‘New charge for lawyer’, Fay Burstin.
      On 14 December 1999, Tim Watson-Munro pleaded guilty in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court to two charges of using and possessing cocaine. He was placed on a twelve-month good behaviour bond. He had given himself up after a listening device planted in a Melbourne office had recorded him buying the drug. Herald Sun, 15 December 1999, p 11, ‘Drug sinks high-flyer’, Fay Burstin.

14. Bankrupt estate of the late Peter Beckwith, 1276 of 1990 XI, circular to creditors, 18 February 1999.