WALK AWAY, RENE

Let’s look at the latest on Rene Rivkin. The so-called, self-styled, stock market guru. The millionaire with the gold worry beads who, in the past, has advised subscribers to his stock market journal to buy a stock while he was quietly selling it. He has now been convicted of Insider Trading and has trotted out a celebrity team of character references from Alan Jones to Graham Richardson.

If you believe the testimonials this man should be walking on water. Millionaire businessman and former newspaper and magazine editor Trevor Kennedy testifies that Rivkin’s "respect for both law and moral code is flawless”.

John Coates, the Australian Olympic Committee president says Rivkin is “a good man, a man of integrity”.

And the Labor Party’s former fixer, Graham Richardson gushes “I think he is a person of the highest character, at times extremely honest, to the point of being painfully honest”.

Frankly, I’m not sure if I would want people like Richardson and Alan Jones testifying for me.

Richardson is of such high moral fibre that he called his autobiography
“Whatever it takes” and has never explained the hookers a Queensland businessman allegedly provided for him while he was a Minister in the Hawke Labor Government.

And Alan Jones was once caught in a public toilet in London allegedly soliciting an undercover policeman to indulge in illegal sexual activity.

Ray Martin produced a statutory declaration lauding his mate Rene. So did TV journalist and newsreader Gina Boon. And Laurie Brereton.

None of them tackled the fact that Rivkin was told confidentially by a prospective buyer of his house ( Gerry McGowan) that Qantas was about to buy Impulse Airlines which he owned.

Rivkin promptly went out and bought 50,000 Qantas shares. Funny, he didn’t advise his newsletter subscribers to do the same.

But the most nauseating rubbish came from Rivkin’s dysfunctional family. His four sons and his wife Gayle sat behind him in court as a sign of solidarity.

She said since the guilty verdict she had lived in “a nightmare I can’t wake from” and said her children would be devastated if he went to jail.

Hardly unique. A lot of kids get hurt when Mummy or Daddy breaks the law, garners headlines and maybe goes to jail.

Something perhaps Papa should have thought of before he got greedy.

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2002