How everything turned sour for business mogul Christopher Skase
A MELBOURNE journalist and stockbroker turned business mogul with stakes in Channel 7, lavish resorts in Queensland and even part ownership of the Brisbane Bears. But things ultimately came undone for Christopher Skase.
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ON THE outskirts of Port Douglas in Far North Queensland an old sugar cane train converted to a tourist ride trundles past a vacant block of land earmarked for development.
On a tall partition shielding the camera-happy foreigners and excited kids from the weeds and rubbish, somebody has stuck a poster.
WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A MEMBER OF THE FINKS
It’s only visible for a second. But it shows the unmistakeable smug grin of former Melbourne businessman Christopher Skase.
Behind his head are rays of light, as if he were the messiah.
A Melbourne journalist and stockbroker turned mega-rich businessman, Skase was loathed by the investors and creditors he left behind when he fled to Spain as his company collapsed.
He was an international fugitive and the face of greed for many Australians.
He was even the subject of an Australian film, Let’s Get Skase, in 2001, about a fictional plot to kidnap him and return him to Australia to face justice.
But to many who still benefit from the tourist dollar in Port Douglas, kickstarted by Skase’s Mirage resort in the 1980s, he wasn’t all bad.
No matter how he was viewed for his achievements and disastrous failures, Skase’s fate tells a cautionary tale about wealth and happiness.
THE QINTEX BEHEMOTH
In his late twenties, Skase founded a company that took over Qintex, a small firm based in Tasmania.
Educated at Caulfield Grammar and formerly a finance journalist, his business talent was immense and Qintex grew over several years to become a pre-eminent Australian corporation.
It had fingers in pies across the country including resorts, the Seven Network and even a share in the Brisbane Bears football club.
FINALLY PIXIE SAYS SHE’S SORRY
AFTER YEARS IN EXILE, PIXIE SKASE RETURNS
PIXIE SKASE’S ROAD FROM RICHES TO RENTAL
At the Mirage resort in Port Douglas, no expense was spared.
It boasted five acres of lagoon pools and a foyer and restaurant clad with Italian marble.
As one story goes, a large floor section of the resort was done in marble only for Skase’s wife Pixie to decide it didn’t look right. It was taken up and replaced.
Another story says Skase flew his private jet from Queensland to Melbourne with the sole task of picking up a dress for Pixie.
But the good times couldn’t last forever.
As interest rates lifted the Skase empire was soon struggling on repayments.
A large share of the resort business had to be flogged off and creditors started circling.
Skase saw the end coming well before the spectacular collapse of Qintex and, as early as 1989, he was moving money overseas.
But even he couldn’t tell how low his reputation would sink, and how hated he would become in his home country.
INTERNATIONAL FUGITIVE
By October 1989 tension had grown between Skase and the Qintex board.
He demanded millions more in investments and even a personal pay rise.
The dispute was eventually reported to statutory authority ASIC, then the freshly established Australian Securities Commission, and things took a turn for the worse for Skase.
In the grip of the recession we had to have, Qintex went down.
The Seven Network stake was sold off and debt climbed into the hundreds of millions.
After being arrested, briefly held and released, Skase fled to Spain in 1991 where he hoped a lack of extradition agreement would forever prevent his return to face justice in Australia.
And it worked.
Throughout the 1990s, despite expensive government attempts, no extradition could be made and none of the money that Skase has moved overseas could be retrieved.
It had emerged the total debt was almost $2 billion.
Skase claimed he was too ill to travel and appeared in a wheelchair with a breathing mask for news cameras, but other footage showed him healthy and walking, enjoying the beach and his new Spanish mansion.
He and Pixie took up Dominican citizenship to stall the extradition process.
A public appeal, later abandoned, sought money to hire a bounty hunter to kidnap the fugitive and bring him home, and the film starring Lachy Hulme solidified Skase’s villainy in the Australian psyche.
He would never return to Australia. But his short life was not as he had planned.
ILLNESS AND DEATH
Just as hope of a fresh extradition push was on the horizon, Skase’s health deteriorated.
Many Australians remained sceptical about Skase’s condition until his death from Stomach Cancer in Spain in 2001.
In 2008 Pixie returned to Australia where she now lives. There is nothing left of their former fortune.
In Port Douglas Skase’s legacy lives on.
The marina, formerly part of the Mirage resort company, was recently refurbished and bustles with reef divers and restaurant diners.
Some local tourism operators admit Skase put them on the map and they’re still reaping the benefits.
But his greed and stubborn rejection of justice ensured the infamy of the Skase name.
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