60 Minutes: Wife of Adam Whittington selling assets to fund defence

The wife of Adam Whittington is selling family assets to raise cash for his legal defence in Lebanon.

Gina Whittington at her home in Pacific Pines on the Gold Coast.

The wife of detained Australian ex-soldier Adam Whittington is selling family assets to raise cash for his legal defence in Lebanon.

Karin Whittington had racked up more than $150,000 in costs and was so financially strapped she had put her husband’s Range Rover up for sale in Sweden, the family said.

The mother of two said yesterday that “no one has had the ­decency to contact me” from ­either the Australian government or the Nine Network, which allegedly financed Mr Whittington’s bungled attempt to snatch back the abducted children of Brisbane woman Sally Faulker.

The child recovery agent was arrested three weeks ago in Beirut alongside Ms Faulkner and a 60 Minutes crew after the bid to grab the two children backfired.

Nine has since cut him loose, saying he had a contract with Ms Faulkner, not the network. This is despite evidence presented to a Beirut court by Mr Whittington’s lawyers purporting to show that Nine paid his company $69,000 on January 22.

Ms Faulkner returned home with 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown and the three-man television crew last weekend.

Mr Whittington’s mother, Gina, said she had not been able to get past the switchboard when she phoned Nine, asking what could be done to help her son, even though she was approached by the network last September to participate in what was described as a “documentary” on him.

Karin Whittington had bills of about 1 million krona ($160,000) and was frantically trying to raise funds. “We are getting desperate,” Gina Whittington said from her home near Queensland’s Gold Coast.

Before her release, Ms Faulkner’s Lebanese lawyer said Nine had paid her $115,000 for rights to the story of the children’s recovery from her estranged Lebanese husband, Ali Elamine.

“I am so angry. 60 Minutes caused all of this and now they are trying to wash their hands of Adam,” Gina Whittington said.

Mr Whittington’s cousin, ­Marcell Gorman, tried unsuccessfully yesterday to get through to Nine’s management.

Nine director of communications Victoria Buchan said “there was nothing” the network could say to the family, as Mr Whittington’s financial arrangement had been with Ms Faulkner, not Nine. A dual national, he had travelled to Lebanon on a British passport.

“The family are obviously distressed and concerned … and I ­totally understand that,” she said. “I feel empathy for them. But he did not travel to Lebanon in any way representing Channel Nine, in no way was under contract with us … he was there working with Sally Faulkner on a contract with her, on his British passport. He is represented legally by local people there. As unfortunate as it is, that is it.”

A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs a Trade said that as he had entered Lebanon on his British passport, Mr Whittington has been receiving consular assistance from the British embassy in Beirut.

Gina Whittington said her son was born in Liverpool, in Sydney’s west, and raised in Australia ­before he joined the Australian Army at 18. His dual nationality was courtesy of his British-born father and allowed him to sign on with the British police after he left the army.

Mr Whittington issued a statement through his Lebanese lawyer, Joe Karem, to mark Anzac Day, saying: “To all my brothers who have served and still are serving my country at home and those still abroad, I am thinking of you on this special day. I have been abandoned by my country but I will never abandon you guys.”