How Radhika Oswal crushed ANZ’s will to litigate

A steely “wifey” brought to a screaming halt one of Australia’s most extraordinary pieces of litigation.

Radhika, secodn from left, and Pankaj Oswal outside Victorian Supreme Court. Picture: David Geraghty

It was Radhika Oswal’s turn in the witness stand last month that brought to a screaming halt one of Australia’s most extraordinary pieces of litigation, the trial of a $2.5 billion claim brought by the Indian businesswoman and her husband against the ANZ.

Over an afternoon and morning in mid-August, Radhika’s clear, confident voice dealt crushing blows to everyone who had crossed her since an arranged marriage at the age of 18: ANZ executives — especially former chief risk officer Chris Page — her in-laws and even her husband.

Her evidence showed how mistaken Page was to give her the dismissive tag “wifey” in an internal email — treating her as “nothing more than an appendage” of Pankaj Oswal, as her counsel, Garry Rich, SC, told the Victorian Supreme Court during the 11 weeks of hearings. The mistake helped cost the bank more than $200 million, paid to the Oswals to make them go away, plus tens of millions more in legal fees.

Misjudging Radhika as only a glamorous adjunct to her dowdy, business-minded husband was the second of ANZ’s mistakes.

The other was lending them so much in the first place. At the peak, the Oswals and their companies owed ANZ more than $1.3bn, secured against the Burrup Fertiliser business, in Western Australia, and the couple’s other interests here and overseas.

That error was committed under John McFarlane, who was ANZ chief executive until 2007, and continued under his replacement, Mike Smith.

From the witness stand, Radhika declared some of the security documents ANZ relied upon were forged by her husband — sitting right there in the public gallery.

But she also supported Pankaj’s most sensational claim: that Page put him in a headlock during a torrid meeting on the Sunday before Christmas, 2009.

At times during the trial it seemed Page took the “chief risk” part of his job title more seriously than the “officer” part: he also wrote an allegedly racist email to Smith that called the Oswals “Indians with no moral compass”.

Radhika dealt a particularly wounding blow when telling the court that at the same 2009 meeting, ANZ general counsel, Bob Santamaria, threatened that, if she didn’t sign over to the bank her $1bn Burrup stake, the couple would go to jail and their two daughters “would become orphans”. Bank insiders who regarded Santamaria as a consummate gentleman, were stung.

Radhika painted herself as a woman who, while enjoying a “very blessed” upbringing, was held back by a strictly Hindu family who limited her education to a Swiss finishing school where subjects included event organising — for “if you were the daughter of, or married to, an important man”.

She made clear that, despite her lack of business training, she was alert to any effort — by the bank or her husband — to take away Burrup shares that were hers alone.

If the trial had continued, Radhika would have faced cross examination from ANZ’s fearsome Queen’s Counsel, Alan Archibald. But, given her steel, would there have been any point?

It’s perhaps little wonder that after an adjournment was called on August 17, Smith’s replacement, Shayne Elliott, who only joined ANZ in 2009, lacked any appetite to continue the case.