Disgraced corporate titan Ron Brierley leaves Long Bay jail after child abuse image sentence cut

Former businessman Ron Brierley left Long Bay jail this morning, sporting a grey beard and looking a shadow of his former self, after serving his sentence for possessing child abuse material.

Disgraced businessman Ron Brierley has left a Sydney jail a shadow of his former self after his sentence was reduced for possessing a trove of child abuse material.

A photo was taken showing the once feared corporate raider being driven away from Long Bay jail – one of NSW’s hardest prisons – early on Sunday morning.

The 84-year-old, a household name in the 1980s who was the boss of the Bank of New Zealand and a board member of the SCG Trust, was jailed for 14 months last year after pleading guilty to possessing tens of thousands of child sexual abuse images.

Ron Brierley leaves the Long Bay jail in Sydney on Sunday morning. Picture: AAP

Australian Border Force officials had stopped Brierley, of Point Piper, just as he was about to get on a flight to Fiji at Sydney Airport in 2019.

The officials found images of scantily clad children on his laptop.

He told officers he thought the images were “perfectly okay” and had been “approved by various bodies”.

Brierley at an earlier court appearance.

Brierley’s health rapidly declined when he was put in jail in October 2021.

A court heard he had complained of leg pain and when doctors looked at him they discovered a cancerous growth.

Brierley had the lump removed, but a cellmate had to help him shower properly and stitches on the wound broke.

The court was told Brierley was showering only every 10 days due to concerns of slipping and was also showing signs of dementia.

Lawyers for Brierley asked the NSW Supreme Court to release their client from jail early due to his “extreme ill health”.

Appeal judges recently overturned his initial seven-month non-parole sentence and instead imposed a new term of a minimum four months jail.

With time already served, Brierley first became eligible for release on Sunday.

In sentencing him, NSW District Court Judge Sarah Huggett said Brierley had collected images for years.

“Images of this kind are neither innocuous or benign,” she said.

“For decades he had been an intelligent and high functioning businessman … his offending was not isolated nor aberrant nor something that was only in his later years.”

Born in New Zealand, Brierley earned the title corporate raider due to his daring business decisions.

One in 20 Kiwis owned stock in his company, Brierley Investments.