Christopher Skase begged friends for money to fund his legal fight in prison cell toilet on smuggled phone
Christopher Skase begged his family and friends for money to fund his legal case from the toilet of his prison cell on a smuggled mobile phone, as his son-in-law has revealed the desperate measures the disgraced businessman took to try to get back on his feet.
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Christopher Skase begged his family and friends for money to fund his legal case from the toilet of his prison hotel cell on a smuggled mobile phone, his son-in-law has revealed.
Tony Larkins has told how he helped Skase fight his legal battles for a decade in Spain.
Now living in Seaford, Mr Larkins said he did not regret helping his father-in-law, despite the personal toll it took on him.
He said that the widespread belief that Skase, who spent a year in a Spanish jail fighting extradition to Australia, funnelled millions from his failed Australian businesses was wrong.
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“I would smuggle the mobile phone into the jail when I knew one of the guards was less strict and he would go to the toilet while I sat on the bed,” Mr Larkins said.
“I’d slip him he phone, he’d go to the toilet and he’d call people and literally beg.
“That jail cell was killing him. If there had been a cent hiding anywhere in the world he would have got me to dig it up.”
Mr Larkins interview came after he, and illustrator Ian McDonald, last week gave the Sunday Herald Sun access to Skase’s book, which his company published.
No money was paid for access to the book or the interview.
Skase was one of Australia’s biggest businessman in the 1980s, with his $3.3 billion company owning the Channel Seven network, a string of resorts under the Mirage brand and the AFL Brisbane team.
But his company Qintex collapsed after a pilots’ strike and record high interest rates in the late 1980s.
He went bankrupt in 1991 with debts of $172 million and went to the Spanish island of Majorca to rebuild his life.
But he refused to come back to Australia to face fraud charges over claims he propped up his share price.
Skase business dealings in Spain on potential developments were unable to match his early success in Australia.
Mr McDonald, an artist who became friends with Skase, said the tycoon was trying to create “great work.”
“He would have continued to create and everyone would have been paid and everyone would have been employed,” he said.
“It happens every day of the week, people go out of business, but at that level he was at it was bigger. It was big news.
“How many Australians, how much money did they lose?”
Mr Larkins relocated to Spain with his family to work with Mr Skase.
He sold a house in Sydney in the early 1990s to help fund their life there, as the legal bills mounted.
“I regret selling my house in Sydney to help us stay there when it all went pear shaped,” he said.
“But I have nothing but the utmost respect for the man I loved spending the 10 years with him.”
Mr Larkins said Skase was unfairly treated by the media and he wanted to change the perception of him.
Skase died in 2001, aged 52.
Mr Larkins wrote his own book his life in exile, Skase, Spain and Me - Never a dully day.
The book can be found at http://www.skasespainandme.com.au/
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