54

The Peter Huxley Scandal

Throughout the late 1960s in Sydney a dapper gent was setting the Sydney racetracks alight with massive bets that were big even by today’s standards. The punter was always immaculately groomed in an expensive suit, collar and tie and polished shoes. Sometimes he won, but most times he lost. When he lost he settled with bank cheques.

The bookies never asked any questions as to the identity of the mystery punter and on the occasion when the racing columnists told of his Saturday betting exploits in the Sunday papers he would vanish, only to resurface a few weeks later. He began betting a thousand at a time but, by the mid to late 1960s, he was winning or losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a day. The money had to be coming from somewhere.

The rumours circulated, as rumours do on the racetrack, but not a soul knew for sure who the clandestine gambler was. Or if anyone did, they weren’t saying anything. And that’s the way he liked it. Even when the bookies gave him credit as they competed for his business, they often found themselves in the dubious position of being owed hundreds of thousands of dollars by a man whose name they didn’t know. But they had no cause for worry. He always settled in bank cheques.

At the same time, in what seemed another world a million miles away, a brilliant young man was racing up the corporate ladder a lot faster than most of the favourites at Randwick. A 43-year-old father of five, Peter Geoffrey Huxley was past-secretary of the then Rural Bank, of which he had been tipped to become president until he resigned in 1969 and took up the position as managing director with the highly respected Red Hill Station Pty Ltd.

On his climb to the top and the corporate riches that lay in waiting, Peter Huxley had earned a reputation as one of Sydney’s most respected bankers and was a regular name on the A list for invitations to social functions.

Huxley sat on the boards of, and was personally involved with fundraising for, numerous charitable organisations such as the Freedom from Hunger Campaign, Unicef Australia and Austcare. They entrusted him to bank their funds where they would earn the best return before they were distributed to their worthy causes throughout the world.

So when the police arrived and took Peter Huxley away on suspicion of embezzling his previous employer and numerous charities of million of dollars and losing it at the racetrack, most of Sydney’s elite clutched at their pearls and couldn’t believe that it was the same Peter Huxley they had taken into their trust.

It seemed as though the dapper gent at the races and the leading Sydney socialite and ‘boy most likely’ were one in the same. In Huxley’s absence the Rural Bank did an audit and was found to be missing a total of $5,297,919. By today’s standards that would be between $90 and $100 million. The police believed that Peter Huxley could help them with their inquiries. As it turned out he could, and the minute he felt the cold hand of retribution on his shoulder he revealed all.

Huxley told police that he had stolen money from the Rural Bank by simply opening an account in the name of the Freedom from Hunger Campaign and using it as his own. He replenished it with his ever-increasing misappropriations from other accounts over which he had financial control, and was drawing or redepositing large sums of cash as he pleased. When needed he would draw a bank cheque against the account, allegedly for some worthy cause, to pay his punting bills.

By the mid-1960s Huxley was betting thousands on each race and knew that he needed a huge win to meet his debts. He told police that the opportunity came when he backed a horse to cover all of his debts and the horse won by an eyebrow. As he was leaving the course, determined that his life of crime was over and he would never be discovered, he was horrified to hear over the loudspeaker that a protest had been lodged against the winner. It was upheld. He went back to the betting and dug his grave deeper.

Huxley told the police that a lot of his major losses were with rails bookmaker Bill Waterhouse, with whom he bet on-course or alternatively rang on Saturday mornings to place a bet. In late 1967 and early 1968 Huxley paid cheques totalling $702,577 into accounts, which were eventually paid over to Waterhouse.

But not all of Huxley’s betting binges were disastrous. In one period over 12 days Huxley outlaid a total of $383,000, but lost only $110. Waterhouse told police that initially Huxley had made cash bets with him for some months and that from about May 1967 he allowed Huxley, who he knew nothing about and knew only as ‘Peter Hunter’, to bet with him on credit.

Waterhouse said that on at least two occasions Huxley owed him around $700,000 but he (Waterhouse) made no inquiries about Huxley. He even made no effort to trace the mystery gambler when Huxley stopped betting with him in 1969 (which was when Huxley left the Rural Bank to join Red Hill) still owing him about $700,000. Waterhouse simply explained that it was quite obvious that Hunter had gone and had disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived. When Huxley was arrested a year later he claimed that he owed Waterhouse about $600,000. Good luck getting it.

But while these days most people would recommend Huxley for a Victoria Cross for doing to the bank what banks have been doing to us for years, he made one monumental mistake in that in the wash-up he had not returned money to the Freedom from Hunger Campaign account to the tune of $1.8 million. It was deemed that he had embezzled money from the starving people of the world. And the $1.8 million was never accounted for. Not a good look at all.

Huxley pleaded guilty to 129 charges of fraudulent misap-propriation, forgery, uttering and other matters relating to the manipulation of funds. Given that there was no proof that the Freedom from Hunger Campaign’s $1.8 million had dissipated along with all of the other funds that went to the bookies, Judge Head handed down the heaviest sentence ever for a white-collar crime in New South Wales – 20 years in jail.

In 1971 the AJC refused to renew Bill Waterhouse’s license and did not give it back until 1973. Waterhouse was quoted as saying at the time: ‘Huxley was my downfall.’

In September 1977, a review of Huxley’s case caused huge public debate and in December of that year Huxley unsuccessfully appealed against his 12-year nonparole period. A year later Huxley was released from prison on licence, having served almost nine of his 20-year sentence.