Tycoons count cost of lost empires

ALAN BOND, the failed Australian tycoon, was back in court last week. This time he was facing four charges of dishonesty with intent to defraud the Bond Corporation, the empire he once headed, over the purchase of an Edouard Manet painting, La Promenade.

At the start of a six-week hearing in Perth, the prosecution alleged that Bond's family company had traded La Promenade in a series of deals which disadvantaged Bond Corporation, before it was finally sold at auction in New York in late 1988 for Adollars 17m ( pounds 8m).

For the Australian public, it was an uneasy case of the 1980s revisited. Bond became a national hero after his yacht won the America's Cup in 1983. He went on to build an international brewing, media and property empire and to become synonymous with the 1980s style of Australian venture capitalism through bank lending, share speculation and takeover battles fuelled by huge debts.

Their empires have since collapsed, leaving the tycoons shunned by the financial, political and media establishments that were once happy to embrace them. A series of painful and expensive inquiries by a Royal Commission, the Australian Securities Commission and the National Crime Authority have spent years pursuing money trails from Australia to New Zealand, Britain, Spain, Switzerland and beyond.

One by one, the court cases involving the fast-money entrepreneurs and their associates have begun to unfold, providing Australians with a surreal backdrop to the sober economic recovery of the 1990s, as the country tries to put 'the collective madness', as one inquiry described the 1980s, behind it.

Nowhere was the madness more extreme than in Bond's home state of Western Australia, where some of the more outlandish deals were struck. Bond was preceded in court in Perth 10 days ago by Brian Burke, the state Labor Premier who forged a now discredited partnership known as WA Inc between the state government and Perth's high-flying tycoons, including Bond.

WA Inc deals left taxpayers with losses estimated at Adollars 1bn. Burke, a former television journalist, was convicted on four false pretences charges and sent to prison for two years, the first Australian figure to be imprisoned for criminal offences committed as a head of government. Here is where some of the most prominent 1980s figures stand now:

Alan Bond: Once one of Australia's richest men, with a personal fortune estimated at Adollars 350m, he was declared bankrupt two years ago with personal debts estimated at Adollars 500m. His family company is insolvent and Bond Corp is a shell. Bond's large legal and travel bills appear to be paid by family and friends.

In 1992, he served three months of a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, but was released after an appeal court quashed his conviction on a dishonesty charge. That charge related to his role in the abortive rescue, after the 1987 stock market crash, of Rothwells, a Perth merchant bank once run by Laurie Connell, Bond's former business associate.

The Manet painting at the centre of the latest charges was part of Bond's former art collection, valued at Adollars 146m, which also included Van Gogh's Irises.

Laurie Connell: he epitomised the 1980s style of doing business, by living high, working fast and fixing deals for which he often charged million-dollar 'success fees'. Connell was sent to prison for five years in May after being convicted of perverting the course of justice over a 1983 horse-race fix. He still faces charges over the Rothwells collapse.

John Elliott: unlike the self-made Perth tycoons, Elliott emerged from the Melbourne business establishment to build a brewing and agricultural company, Elders-IXL, which took over the Foster's empire in Australia and Courage in Britain. He was once president of the conservative Liberal Party, and was touted as a future prime minister.

Elliott's empire collapsed under debt and he lost control of it in 1992. Last year, he was charged with being part of a conspiracy in 1988 to defraud Elders-IXL of Adollars 66m. Elliott has vigorously denied the charges.

Christopher Skase: a former financial journalist who built a television and resort empire called Qintex, Skase fled Australia in 1989 when the empire collapsed, and has lived in Majorca ever since.

The Australian government is seeking his extradition to face charges involving the alleged misuse of more than Adollars 10m of Qintex funds. At a court hearing in Palma de Mallorca last week, Skase, breathing through a respirator, said he was suffering from a severe lung disease and that he would die if forced to fly to Australia.

He said he did not trust Australian law to give him a fair trial, and offered to stand trial in Spain. The court reserved judgment.

(Photograph omitted)