Gordon Wood had taken to writing notes to Caroline Byrne to assure her how much he loved her. Love letters are tricky things. Not everyone can hit the right note. In 1994, Gordon Wood had the happy thought that he could endear himself to Caroline by posing as an erotic biscuit. Rene Rivkin’s driver and personal assistant chose Australia’s favourite chocolate treat, the Tim Tam. ‘You’ve heard of the packet of Tim Tams that never runs out, well, I am giving you the dessert that never runs out—and it is sweet and pure and full of goodness,’ Wood wrote to his beloved. ‘That dessert is my passionate, undying and deepest love for you. You can tuck into this dessert whenever you want, as often as you like, and what is more, eat as much as you can and never fear—it is endless, limitless . . . and will be there as long as we both shall live.’
There was much, much more: ‘You are my purpose in life . . . I am on this planet to love you . . . this is the meaning of love . . . I now believe it is a crime to use the word LOVE in any way that doesn’t relate to you . . . Not only are you my princess and my goddess, but in my eyes you are Miss World, Miss Universe, Miss All-Time Greatest and Most Beautiful Woman.’
Excerpts from the letters appeared in Woman’s Day shortly after Wood left Australia in 1998. Woman’s Day ran even more earnest outpourings by Wood, but the Tim Tam line was the high point. Personally I would have seen Wood more as an Iced Vo Vo, and there’s not a lot of people I would say that about. It’s hard to project just the right quality of coconut flakiness. In 1998, Rene Rivkin, that old Arnotts All Sorts, put it more prosaically and with fewer biscuits: ‘I knew how much he [Wood] loved her. He called her “Chicky babes” and she called him “Gordy”.’ Actually that pretty much summed up a common reaction people had to Wood’s romantic sallies: ‘Oh Gord!’
Gordon and Caroline had eased effortlessly into the latte society of eastern Sydney. There had been no more talk about drugs. Caroline’s friend Natalie McCamley said in a statement tendered at her inquest in 1998: ‘I’m not sure if Caroline used the drug [ecstasy] any other time but Gordon one other time said that he knew a guy that could get it for me. He said to me, “It’s safer to get it off somebody that knows what they’re doing, rather than buying it off some stranger.”’
Wood later told police he and Caroline had had ‘a couple of puffs’ of marijuana. Another friend, Narelle Cook, said, ‘I remember Caroline talking to me one time in her flat in Elizabeth Bay that she and Gordon had used the drug ecstasy. I think she also said that they used speed. She said it was just to see what it was like. This was very unlike Caroline because she was always so conscious of her body. I remember at school there would be some of us smoking cigarettes but Caroline wouldn’t even have one puff.’ It’s not thought that Caroline ever went beyond these experiments with drugs.
Rene Rivkin had his hands full with Offset Alpine. From 14 December 1993, Rivkin had become an avid trader of Offset Alpine stock, along with a former Rivkin operative, Nigel Little-wood. One or other of them—often both—bought Offset shares on eleven of the last twelve trading days in December. Rivkin was back in the market on 4 January, and traded throughout January. The shares surged after Christmas with news of the fire but, even with Rivkin’s continued buying, the price did not lift above $1 in the first week of the new year. Then, from 10 January, Rivkin began buying bigger licks of shares through his Stilton account at Bank Leumi. Stilton outlaid $446 000 to buy Offset shares from Rivkin’s Australian holdings, and the share price rocketed to $1.70. There’s no indication Littlewood was involved, but Rivkin’s Swiss trading looked like a classic move to ramp the share price up— selling it from one bank account to another. But why bother? Here was a man who had just had (or back in mid-December was about to have) the luckiest break of his life. The insurers would have to cough up $53 million in cash. Why did Rivkin need a high share price?
It’s critical to remember that behind the impressive façade and the million-dollar lifestyle, Rivkin still didn’t have a lot of money. He had FAI financing him in Australia, and Leumi and EBC Zurich funding him in Switzerland. In each case, he had been loaned money against the value of his shares (sometimes it looks like FAI and Bank Leumi, unbeknown to each other, had mortgages over the same shares). The higher his share price went, the more Rivkin’s bankers would lend him. The money from Offset’s fire insurance would not begin to flow for another six months. And when it did, the money would go to Offset Alpine for replacement presses. If it didn’t, even if the insurers would wear that, the money would immediately become taxable. So while the fire payout was a windfall for the Offset Alpine business it would not benefit Rivkin directly until someone either bought his shares or bought the business. This was the cruel paradox that would drive the human drama that unfolded over the next two years. Rivkin had money, money everywhere, but not enough to spend.
Rivkin had a bundle of friends and supporters holding Offset Alpine stock. Chief among these was Trevor Kennedy. Offset Alpine’s Top Twenty shareholders list in September 1993 showed he had bought another 225 000 shares in the previous year, either before Stroika bought Offset, or in the months since. By September 1994, Kennedy had bought another 300 000 shares and now held 3.5 per cent of the company. In 1995, this would be worth $2.7 million. That was on top of his share of Rivkin’s EBC Zurich shareholding. Kennedy’s total return from Offset Alpine would come to $5.8 million.
Between them, Rivkin, Kennedy, Graham Richardson and FAI owned 70 per cent of Offset Alpine but there was still sufficient Christmas cheer to spread around the diaspora. Kennedy’s former Consolidated Press colleague, Sean Howard, would clear half a million dollars on his Offset investment—in October 1994, Kennedy and Howard came together again when they joined with Malcolm Turnbull to back an Internet service provider company called Ozemail, which Howard had bought from Consolidated Press Holdings. Turnbull and Kennedy each shelled out $450 000 for a quarter share. Other lucky Offset Alpine investors included real estate agents and old China hands Bart and Ronald Doff, Nora Goodridge and Rivkin’s former butler, Thomas Mann. But the most persistent Rivkin supporters were Ray and Dianne Martin. Rivkin had been doing finance spots with Martin on the Midday Show since 1990. By May 1995, the Martin household had bought no less than four parcels of Offset Alpine shares. The Top Twenty shareholder lists would show Dianne Martin held 100 000 shares while Ray held 83 310. There was also a joint holding of Ray and Dianne with another 52 800. Then there was another 25 000 for Ray, this time with an address care of Channel Nine rather than the family home. In all, the Martins held 261 110 shares, which eventually cashed out for $710 219 in 1995. Sam Chisholm, the former head of Nine, had bought shares in the name of his then wife, Rhonda, back in the Stroika days before the Offset deal. The shares eventually would be worth $85 000. ‘That was all Sam,’ Rhonda Chisholm said. ‘I didn’t see any of it.’
It made for a powerful lot of good feeling directed towards Rene by his many friends and supporters. This was no minor thing as Rivkin approached his fiftieth birthday. But first there were the technicalities of obtaining the payout from the fire. The police report on 9 January concluded that the cause of the fire was ‘undetermined’. On 18 January, Offset Alpine announced that the underwriters had accepted liability for the fire: ‘On the basis of claims to be submitted by the company, the underwriters will be making progress claims as and when required.’
The nature of the negotiations now changed. The primary insurers were now concerned with verifying the replacement value of the old presses, which had been worth only $2.8 million in the books, and with getting the new facilities up and running. The longer it took to restore operations the more they would have to pay out to cover Offset Alpine’s losses from disrupted business. The burden of investigating the fire now passed to Australia’s two biggest reinsurers, Munich Re and Swiss Re. They would provide the largest share of the payout, reportedly $10 million apiece. It is exactly at this delicate point in the payout process that friction can often arise between the various parties involved because there is the danger, when an insurer pays out on a claim, that the reinsurer may later deny it, leaving the insurer with the total bill. In 2004, Jennifer Sexton of the Weekend Australian reported that investigators for the reinsurers had made contact with the FAI assessor who had originally recommended against them accepting the Offset policy. He now complained that his file on Offset had disappeared.
There is nothing very unusual about any of this. In an article he wrote for the Australian Institute of Insurance Journal in 1995, loss adjuster Tony Morgan described the fire as a textbook example of an insurance payout: ‘Despite rumour, anonymous phone calls and uninformed speculation, exhaustive inquiries by forensic experts, investigators and the police failed to establish any evidence which implicated any interests associated with Offset Alpine.’ It’s a careful choice of words. It would be simpler to say there was no evidence of arson; but even if there had been evidence, it would not have been sufficient to thwart an insurance claim. Insurers would have needed not just to show arson, but to link it with parties linked to Offset Alpine. In the meantime, all Rivkin could do was wait.
Elsewhere the year had begun with mixed fortunes. On 23 January, Mark Latham was elected the new Labor member for Werriwa; he replaced John Kerin, who had retired two days before Christmas. He had never really recovered from his demotion and humiliation in 1992, engineered in part by Graham Richardson. Only days remained in Richardson’s own political career.
On 11 March, Offset Alpine announced that it was discussing a replacement value of $42 million for the old presses in its books at $2.79 million, and claimed the total payout could run as high as $88 million. The final figure still had to be negotiated with the insurance companies, but clearly shareholders were facing a staggering windfall. Four days later Rivkin and Kennedy, the two men with the biggest share of the windfall, celebrated by going into business together—opening a golf driving range on an abandoned building site just a chip shot from the Liberal Party’s old Ash Street HQ in the Sydney CBD. It was marvellous timing for Graham Richardson as well, whose name had popped up on 8 March at hearings of the Criminal Justice Commission in Queensland. Two prostitutes claimed they had been with Richardson in a $4000 sex romp the previous August at Hyatt Sanctuary Cove on the Gold Coast, paid for by a US defence contractor. Richardson denied this and it was never proven. However, the knowledge that he was now a Swiss millionaire must have made Richardson’s next decision an easier one. On 14 March he told Keating he was leaving politics. He went public with the news ten days later—well before the National Party’s Bob Katter broadcast the CJC claims in parliament. Richo made his sentimental speech about the ‘dignity of battlers’ at his farewell dinner on 31 March before returning to his table with Rivkin.
The good news continued. On 8 April Transport Minister Laurie Brereton appointed his old mate Trevor Kennedy to the Qantas board. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Paul Keating, who had been receiving a caning in Parliament from the Liberal Party over his troubled investment in a piggery, sold his half share in the business on 7 March to wealthy Indonesians. That old Labor numbers man Eddie Obeid now popped up as a director on some of the property companies that had been in the piggery group. It looked like Obeid had come into some money—in late 1993, a number of his companies had been facing wind-up applications but he appears to have secured new backing from Macquarie Bank. Had Obeid earned profits from Offset Alpine shares? There would have been nothing amiss if he had, but Obeid has never talked about it.
Gordon Wood was making his own foray into big business. In March 1994, Gordon and Caroline took a Thai takeaway meal for dinner with Tony Byrne at his apartment in The Connaught on Liverpool Street in the city. Wood carried a share price pager. According to a statutory declaration that Tony Byrne made in March 1998, Wood then said to him: ‘Offset Alpine is at $1.37. I’ve recently bought shares in Offset Alpine. They are going to go up in price—the insurance company is going to pay up.’ Byrne said that Wood then told him, ‘The fire was a set-up.’
Courier Mail journalist Paul Whittaker subsequently discovered that Offset Alpine’s share register showed that Gordon Wood’s mother, Brenda Wood, bought 7000 shares for $1.30 on 25 February. However Offset shares were well above $1.30 by then, which suggests that either Mrs Wood received a preferential price, or the shares were bought in January. While it was public knowledge by 18 January that the insurers were paying up, it was not until 11 March that Offset revealed how high the insurance windfall was likely to be. Did Gordon Wood have inside information? During this period, Robert Wainwright reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in 2004, Wood approached a businessman with a proposition. Wood told the businessman the fire had been a set-up and that the insurer was going to pay, which created an opportunity to buy a large shareholding in Offset before the share price rose.
Of course, just because Gordon Wood said the fire was a set-up, or even if he believed it was a set-up, it doesn’t mean it was. You would never want to bet your house on the Magic Tim Tam. His record suggested he was up for playing all ends against the middle.
Arrangements were now in full swing for Rivkin’s fiftieth birthday. It would be a glittering night in the Botanic Gardens held in a huge marquee overlooking Mrs Macquarie’s Chair. ‘This is conspicuous consumption, absolutely conspicuous,’ Rivkin told journalist Tony Stephens at the time. The two hundred and fifty guests, who shared the canapés and vintage champagne while the Little River Band played, included Graham Richardson, Laurie Brereton, Rodney Adler, Ray Martin, Michael Yabsley and Trevor Kennedy. The Packers didn’t make it. Caroline and the Tim Tam were there along with George Freris, whose links through the tattoo shop probably helped secure the services of the local chapter of Hells Angels, who cruised through the party on their motorcycles in a salute to Rivkin. Gossip columnist Ros Reines, who was once the officially anointed biographer of the host, costed the affair at $400 000.
Rene told Stephens he had been ‘absolutely delighted’ to be diagnosed with minor manic depression seven years before: ‘I had suspected it but it was a great relief to know for sure.’ He was seeing a psychiatrist once a week and had been taking Prozac for years now, without harmful side effects.
How did he feel about turning fifty? As Maurice Chevalier put it, growing old was better than the alternative. ‘I’m just waiting to die and having as pleasant a time as possible while waiting,’ he told Stephens. He had decided to throw a party but of course now he regretted it. ‘One of the things I like about myself is that I’m frank. There aren’t many people like me. Broadly speaking, I am regarded as not an indecent character. My inferiority complex is of major magnitude.’
Then there were the presents. ‘Beautiful things, I love beautiful things,’ Rivkin told Larry Schwartz. ‘I got a 2000-year-old piece of pottery from one of these people. I got a gold watch from another one. I got three sets of gold cufflinks. I got some beautiful books. I got four or five caricatures of me by various cartoonists. I got a beautiful 1910 Lalique decanter which I love . . .’
This is a telling moment for Rivkin. He might be self-obsessed, but he wasn’t a bad man. ‘Life’s been good but I am a caring person,’ he told Schwartz. ‘I’m not that selfish that I can say to myself, “My life’s good, therefore fuck the Rwandans.” It actually makes me unhappy that there is so much misery in the world. These things actually bring out tears in me . . . I think the world is a total failure. I lie in bed thinking I’d like to be out of here so at least I don’t have to look at it . . . It’s no good saying I’m a have. Yes. I am a have. But what about all the have-nots?’
It was one of the reasons his friends loved him. ‘I don’t believe Rene has an evil thought in his head,’ said Richardson.
It was important to Rivkin that his father, Walter, was at the party. Later Rivkin told a fantastic story about that night and its antecedents to Andrew Denton in an interview on ABC’s Enough Rope in 2003: how his father had criticised him in March 1992 for appearing with Jana Wendt in a television debate over whether Paul Keating had killed the Australian economy. How he called his father’s criticism silly and in response his father disinherited him. The other reason for the disinheritance was that ten years before he had neglected to say Happy New Year to his father’s friends.
Rivkin said he had negotiated with his aunt to ensure his father came to his fiftieth birthday party: ‘I was only willing to issue him an invitation if the sister of his guaranteed that he would come, which he did. Two or three days before the event he withdrew and I exploded and hit the roof and told the sister to pass on to him that if he didn’t come as he promised that I would never speak to him again, and, what’s more—that didn’t matter much to him, but he adored my five children—and that I would never allow my five children to go and visit him.’
As Rivkin put it to Denton, ‘Not everyone is normal like you, Andrew.’
The kindest thing that can be said about this tale is that five months earlier, when the Zurich DA, Dr Nathan Landshut, quizzed him about these matters in Switzerland, Rivkin didn’t put it quite like that. He did talk about being estranged from his father, but that was in response to Landshut’s questions about the guarantee Rene had signed in September 1990, which pledged his father’s Swiss account to cover his own $6 million debt.
‘How should I know whether my father was aware of that when I hadn’t spoken to him for years?’ Rivkin replied. ‘Mr Imfeld [Bank Leumi’s private client investor in Zurich] actually told me that my father really loved me . . . I only ever had that experience with Mr Imfeld.’ Rivkin said that if his father hadn’t wanted him to use the account, why had he given him power of attorney? There seems something almost pathological in Rivkin’s repeated denials of what he had done, and the transformation of his father into a monster, before retreating into sentimentality with the plaintive cry that Imfeld had told him that his father loved him.
Rene also provided a different account in Zurich of how he made up with his father ahead of his party. It began with Imfeld writing to Walter Rivkin on 21 January 1994, suggesting he invest in certain funds and asking for power of attorney to do this. Ten days later, Walter wrote back to accept the proposal. By 18 April, Walter was complaining to Imfeld of massive losses in his account, which he said were nothing like the investments that Imfeld had described and which had been made before he had given approval. On 29 April, Imfeld faxed back to Walter that ‘There is always a solution to a problem and I assure you it will not affect our relationship.’ Walter showed the fax to Rene over lunch. On 19 May, Imfeld wrote to Walter to tell him he had made good the loss by transferring US$186 127.51 into Walter’s account, two weeks before Rene’s party. End of problem.
When questioned about the incident by Landshut, Rene replied airily that he could remember something about a lunch where his father warned him about Imfeld: ‘Apparently my father had seen something in his account that shouldn’t have been there. Imfeld corrected it but my father said I should be careful. I got the impression that my father might have been imagining a problem.’
What Rene didn’t mention was that Imfeld took the money to repay his father out of Rene’s own account. ‘This is the first I’ve ever heard of this,’ Rene said when Landshut raised it, and claimed the transfer was not authorised. But that seems unlikely.
In the interview on Enough Rope, Rivkin was similarly emphatic, continually reassuring Denton that he was telling the truth about his father and about everything else about his life: ‘I don’t lie . . . I get into trouble by telling the truth.’
Rivkin was telling the truth. He just didn’t know what it was. Driven by his deepening bipolar disorder, his life had splintered into parallel worlds that he could not reconcile. With the utmost candour he would lie about anything—though they would not be lies because he really believed the things he said. While Walter Rivkin was by many accounts an overbearing and difficult father, the stories of disinheritance and threats to withhold access to grandchildren appear to be attempts to cloak a shabbier exchange. At the heart of a fictitious life, the father–son relationship was the one area where Rene Rivkin was least able to face the truth.
Two weeks after Rivkin’s party, on 17 June, Offset Alpine announced that it had reached agreement on its insurance payout. The total would come to $53.2 million. Most of the payout was the $42 million replacement value for the presses. The rest was the value of business lost because of the fire. The insurers had kept the payout from going higher by settling the claim quickly. Fortunately the replacement presses were already on order. The insurers had paid $18 million; Offset would have the rest of the money by the first week of July. Rivkin was already in celebration mode. On 2 June, two days before his party, Rene had bought himself a little present. He settled on a small apartment at 118 Crown Street, opposite the City Gym, for $230 000, which he bought through a shelf company called Romale Pty Ltd. He would use it for afternoon naps. Sometimes the boys could drop over to see him. Now Rivkin decided to treat himself to a little overseas trip.
Tony Byrne remembers his daughter coming to see him with big news. ‘Guess what?’ she said. ‘Rene and George have gone on a world trip together. His wife doesn’t know. She thinks he has gone on a business trip on his own.’
Tony Byrne was in the habit of writing up his conversations with Caroline in his diary. The diary notes make it clear that the George to whom Caroline was referring was George Freris, and she was quite clear that Wood saw him as a threat. ‘Rene has set George up in business and showered him with gifts,’ Caroline told her father. ‘It is all for sex of course. Gordon is jealous.’ Here Caroline was mistaken. There is no evidence that Rivkin engaged in sex with any of his young men.
On 2 August, Imfeld transferred $935 000 out of the Stilton account to a mystery account at Swiss bank UBS. It was Stilton’s biggest cash transfer in five years. Rivkin was settling matters with some unknown party. If there was another Offset Alpine beneficiary, this mystery transfer is the only clue. Six days later, he was sitting in Imfeld’s office on Claridenstrasse, writing instructions on a sheet of internal Bank Leumi notepaper. The note said:
Re: George Freris
I wish to leave George Freris $500 000 (five hundred thousand dollars) Australian currency, in the event of my death. I do not wish any member of my family to know about this bequest.
R. Rivkin
Rivkin dated the note and addressed it to Imfeld via his secretary Cahide Ay. Rivkin signed it, then had Imfeld countersign and stamp it. It is tempting, given the cloud of rumour that has dogged Rivkin and his young male friends, together with his reluctance for his family to know anything about it, to see this as some sort of gift for a romantic liaison, or evidence of a romantic attachment. But Rivkin and Freris were not in Zurich on a dirty weekend. This was a business trip and Wood was along too. Offset Alpine had received the final instalment in its $53.2 million payout less than five weeks before. There would be matters to discuss with Ernst Imfeld.
Rivkin had also set up Freris with his own account at Bank Leumi, transferring shares from Stilton as the initial deposit. The bequest was a legal guarantee that more money was coming. Israeli journalist Shraga Elam later discovered that after signing for Freris, Rivkin was about to make a similar provision for Wood when Freris convinced him that it was unwise. Rather than make an identical arrangement at Bank Leumi, Rivkin set up Wood’s account and bequest elsewhere, apparently with EBC Zurich. Almost certainly Rivkin transferred Offset Alpine shares to open Wood’s account. Wood was now part of the golden circle.
The sheer size of the bequests for Freris and Wood is significant. Rivkin could be extremely generous, showering his favourites with gifts worth thousands of dollars. However, half a million dollars is something more than generous. Even in Rene Rivkin’s economy it seems more like something to be given in exchange for exceptional service. The question remains, if Freris and Wood had done something for Rivkin, what was it? Or was it simply Rivkin’s affection for them?
Eleven years later, after Rivkin’s death, Swiss lawyers would disagree over whether the Freris bequest was a valid will under Swiss law. The consensus was that it wasn’t, only because Imfeld filled the date in rather than Rivkin, but lawyers also conceded that some Swiss banks would probably execute such instructions without telling the client’s family or Rivkin’s executor. It is not known if the Wood bequest survived. But what was it for? Rene Rivkin had become rich from the Offset insurance payout. But at that point he was still only rich on paper. It would not have been easy to pay Freris $500 000 immediately—Rivkin had other spending plans in addition to the mysterious cash payment six days before. It would be simpler to pay Freris the money later, when Rivkin was more liquid. In the meantime, the formal bequest Rivkin signed was an assurance that Freris would get the $500 000.
Freris did not later respond to written questions about the bequest when it came to light in 2005. He certainly knew about Rivkin’s Swiss accounts because later he had one himself at Bank Leumi. Rivkin would sometimes buy shares on his behalf through Leumi.
By Wednesday 17 August, Rivkin was back in Australia, where he sold 250 000 Offset Alpine shares from his Australian holding company to his Stilton account. The deal merely transferred $400 000 from Zurich into Rivkin’s hands in Sydney. The day after that, Rivkin was spotted lunching with Graham Richardson at Joe’s Cafe. It’s not surprising that Rivkin would be catching up with Richardson, who had a million-dollar share of the Swiss holdings as well.
The next day, 19 August, saw another piece of unfinished business from the Offset saga resolved. Paul Obeid resigned from the Offset Alpine board. Whatever Eddie Obeid’s family interest had been in Offset, it was now over.
Rodney Adler stood to make the most from Offset Alpine. Both FAI and Adler personally had loaned Rivkin $20 million and, with the rise in the Offset share price after the fire, Rivkin was now in a position to pay off the rest of his debt. In addition, FAI was well ahead on its own investment in Offset. FAI now re-entered the market, spending another $3 million in late 1994 to take its shareholding in Offset Alpine to just under 20 per cent. But another of Adler’s investments had not turned out so well.
Just after midday on Monday 5 September, the state secretary of the Labor Party, John Della Bosca, sat down for a feed with that estimable fellow, Phuong Ngo. The lunch was a thank you for Ngo’s sterling work marshalling votes in the recent election for the Communication Workers Union, the union for which Graham Richardson’s father had once worked. Indeed it was Richardson, together with Leo McLeay, who had identified Ngo as an emerging force in Cabramatta the year before and persuaded him to switch over to Labor after he had first dallied with the Liberals. ‘Everyone wanted to believe in Ngo,’ an ALP source later tried to explain to the Sunday Telegraph. ‘He has this quiet way of talking and bowing his head—he oozes sincerity.’
When Della Bosca had lunch with Ngo in September 1994, and the two men discussed Ngo’s aspirations for a seat in state parliament, Della knew that Ngo was involved in a feud with the sitting member, John Newman. What he didn’t know was that, nine hours later, Ngo would drive two men from the Mekong Club to Newman’s home; then wait around the corner until the Member for Cabramatta arrived home and the two men shot him. Subsequently, while the shock waves of this killing rocked Sydney society, the Labor Party held a preselection contest to decide who would take Newman’s old seat. Young right-winger Reba Meagher emerged the victor two weeks later with the help of Ngo. He had signed up 185 new members, who all lived in a post box, for the critical Canley Vale branch.
A week later, inspectors from the Liquor Administration Board launched an investigation of the Mekong Club’s books. Rodney Adler resigned from the board of Ngo’s Asia Press Company the same day. An inquiry by Licensing Court magistrate Denis Collins over the following two years found that Ngo had misappropriated $68 000 from the club’s petty cash. FAI had loaned $1 million to the club, but the club secretary could not explain how the loan was to be repaid. FAI put a receiver into the club in May 1996.
Collins eventually cleared FAI and FAI consultant Bruce Rowley of allegations they had an inappropriate involvement in the management of the club between May and August 1994. The $150 000 cheque that Lyndi Adler signed over to the club on Christmas Eve 1993 also came to light—Collins concluded it had been used to help the club meet its liabilities to the Liquor Administration Board.
By October 1994, Gordon Wood was working on a little political deal of his own. With Rivkin’s finances improving, he had convinced his boss to put down a deposit on a $270 000 apartment for him in Macleay Street, Potts Point. Wood persuaded Tony Byrne to lend him $150 000 of the $270 000 purchase price, with Rivkin to provide the balance. Unfortunately, Rivkin’s understanding was the other way around—that it was Tony Byrne who was providing the balance. The issue was who took the first mortgage. If Wood got behind in the payments, it was the second lender who would lose out. Rivkin was angry about the mix-up, for which he blamed Tony Byrne. Caroline’s father no longer wanted anything to do with the deal and neither did Rene. Gordon Wood was disconsolate.
Caroline Byrne was in Manila, representing Australia in the Miss Asia-Pacific Quest. Wood could feel another love letter coming on. He wrote to Caroline on 9 November 1994:
You are my only love in my whole life—I have never experienced this before I met you and I will never experience it again. I want for nothing . . . I love you my princess, my chicky-babe . . . I am yours forever with passion and deep, deep unbridled love. My Love, My Love, forever. Gordy X.
It wasn’t getting any better. He should have stuck with the biscuits.