Belle Gibson reportedly paid $75k for 60 Minutes interview

THE Nine Network reportedly paid cancer con artist Belle Gibson $75,000 for last year’s interview with 60 Minutes’ Tara Brown.

DISGRACED health blogger Belle Gibson was secretly paid $75,000 for her appearance on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutesin June last year.

At the time of the interview it was rumoured Gibson — who’d admitted tricking millions of people into believing she had cancer — was paid $45,000 for the teary tell-all with reporter Tara Brown.

Gibson refused to disclose whether she was paid for participating in the interview, and the Nine Network has a policy of not disclosing details of payments made to any interview subjects on any of its programs.

But according to The Age, documents obtained by Fairfax Media show Nine made two separate payments each of $37,500 to Gibson’s lawyers in July 2015 under the reference, ‘60 Minutes — Belle Gibson interview’.

It’s alleged that Gibson failed to donate profits from her app and cookbook to charity.

Consumer Affairs Victoria started an investigation last year amid claims Gibson failed to donate $300,000 to charity she had promised from the sale of her The Whole Pantry app and cookbook.

Consumer Affairs say Gibson engaged in “unconscionable conduct” by claiming she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2009 and given four months to live but then healed herself naturally after rejecting conventional treatments.

People are upset over allegations that Gibson continues to profit.

During the 60 Minutes interview, Gibson admitted she “might have caused” people to stray away from conventional medicine but refused to give a straightforward apology for her actions.

She also could not tell Brown whether she was 23 or 26.

Last year more than 11,200 people signed an online petition titled ‘Belle Gibson is still profiting off faking cancer’ amid the speculation that Gibson was paid by Channel Nine, and called for the money to be handed over to cancer research instead.

Gibson’s case returned to the Federal Court in Victoria last week, with Consumer Affairs Victoria seeking to fine her for allegedly saying she recovered from terminal brain cancer through healthy eating and natural therapies.

But Gibson failed to show up and face her critics for the fourth time in a row. She has also failed to lodge any defence with the court.

The watchdog also accuses her of engaging in misleading or deceptive commerce by making the claims to promote her Whole Pantry app and book.

The app was available for purchase between August 2013 and May 2016. Consumer Affairs’ barrister, Catherine Button, noted Gibson publicly stated she had a stroke at work and was subsequently diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour in June 2009.

Gibson told her Facebook and Instagram followers she started receiving oral chemotherapy for her cancer before abandoning conventional medicine.

“I pulled myself out. My doctors freaked out but they couldn’t stop me,” Button quoted Gibson as saying.

Gibson told her large social media following she started “getting back to basics” and opted for healthy foods and natural therapies which healed her cancer, the court heard.

“Her publisher went out and published her book on the basis of her claims,” Button said last Tuesday.

Penguin paid Gibson’s company almost $264,000 for her The Whole Pantry cookbook, according to court documents.

A video presented in court last week shows Gibson and Penguin were concerned about cracks in her cancer survival story, prior to her admission that she had made the whole thing up.

The recorded interview (that can be viewed at the top of this post) shows her struggling to defend her lies in a media training session ahead of publicity for the release of the cookbook.

Gibson struggled to answer questions in her recorded media training.

In the video, Gibson is asked to prepare for interrogation from investigative journalists.

“What we suspect might happen now is that because you are a success story of the moment — you are one of Australia’s great success stories of the moment — you know what journalists do, they want to start scratch, scratch, scratching away,” a woman says off-camera.

“They already are,” replies Gibson.

“And we’re concerned about that,” the Penguin representative says.

The book was released in October 2014 and withdrawn from sale five months later.

Gibson made more than $1 million in profits from her cookbook and the wellness app.

The maximum penalty she can face is $1.1 million.