“I know that you know, but you’ll never be able to prove it,” Graham Richardson once said to me more than 20 years ago, back when we were still talking.
For a reporter whose career has been spent uncovering crime and corruption, Richo was the one who got away.
It’s hard to know where to start when talking about Graham Frederick Richardson: bagman, political fixer and bon vivant. There were the bribes paid to him by way of prostitutes, Offset Alpine, Swiss bank accounts, taking a cut of the political donations he collected, accepting a hefty payment from Eddie Obeid in return for getting Obeid into parliament, having a major property developer build the extension on his home, being on the payroll of developers, and so much more.
An “Antipodean Machiavelli”, was how Richardson’s former cabinet colleague Neal Blewett once described him, offering that he was “the arch proponent of vested interests”.
Graham Richardson and Herald chief investigative reporter Kate McClymont.Credit: Artwork: Michael Howard
Former foreign minister Gareth Evans once said Richo’s inclination for doing “whatever it takes … was not always a recipe for good, principled government”.
“Throughout Graham Richardson’s 23 years in political life … he never learnt the finer points of ethical behaviour. He had always traded in favours, mateship and deals,” wrote Marian Wilkinson in The Fixer, her 1996 unauthorised biography of Richardson.
But Labor’s current political leaders appear to have turned a blind eye to Richardson’s unethical and immoral behaviour, which he deployed with a combination of unbridled ruthlessness and abundant charm to achieve both personal and political ends.
“Graham, quite simply, was a Labor hero,” said Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles after Richardson’s death on Saturday.
Once a fountain of knowledge on Richo’s unscrupulous behaviour, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has offered the late powerbroker a state funeral, saying: “We have lost a giant of the Labor Party and a remarkable Australian.”
Loading
One curious event, which perfectly captures the absurd corruption in which Richo was embroiled for most of his life involves lunch at his favourite restaurant, Machiavelli, a kangaroo scrotum purse, and the request of sex for favours.
It was 2011, and Richardson and a female luncheon companion were tucking into their pasta at Machiavelli, a restaurant popular with politicians, poseurs and wheeler-dealers.
Much to the astonishment of fellow diners, a woman marched over to Richo’s table and hurled a kangaroo scrotum purse at him, saying: “If we were in the jungle, I’d have cut your balls off and worn them round my neck.”
The woman in question was Leanne Edelsten, who had complained to me years earlier that Richo had propositioned her. At the time, her controversial husband, Dr Geoffrey Edelsten, was facing charges that he’d hired a hitman, Chris Flannery, to deal with a troublesome patient. She claimed that Richo had offered to get her husband off the charges if Leanne would have sex with him. Leanne told me she looked Richo up and down, before saying: “I love my husband, but not that much.”
Leanne rang me to tell me of her spectacular encounter with Richo at the restaurant. Following her call, I received a breathless call from my colleague Deb Snow, who just happened to be Richo’s luncheon companion as she was writing a “Lunch With” piece on Richo for the Herald. Snow recorded the extraordinary incident with the kangaroo scrotum purse in her piece, including Richo’s claim that he had never met the woman before.
When lunching, Richo would speak candidly of his extramarital activities. He once told a senior News Corp figure that his secret was to conduct such liaisons, “west of Five Dock and south of Brighton-le-Sands”.
Graham Richardson during a Lunch With interview with the Herald in 2011.Credit: Fairfax Media
Years earlier, Richo’s penchant for sex workers in payment of favours ultimately led to his resignation from federal parliament. A Queensland investigation into a prostitution ring discovered Richardson had been involved in $4000 sex romp with two Gold Coast sex workers at the five-star Hyatt Sanctuary Cove hotel on August 10, 1993.
The women were allegedly provided to Richardson by restaurateur Nick Karlos and his former business partner Bob Burgess in exchange for Richardson making favourable representations to a US defence contractor on Burgess’s behalf.
In her book, Wilkinson revealed that six days after Burgess gave evidence to the Criminal Justice Commission, Richo offered his resignation from federal parliament to then-prime minister Paul Keating, citing ill health.
Only two years earlier, Richardson had resigned from the ministry after it was revealed he had aided his cousin by marriage, Gregory Symons, in the so-called Marshall Islands affair.
While the CJC was satisfied that the sex workers had been provided to Richardson, ultimately, the corruption watchdog couldn’t establish that Burgess had supplied them.
Burgess was subsequently jailed in NSW for paying $330,000 in corrupt secret commissions to a senior executive of Mitsubishi Electric Australia.
It was so well known that Richardson demanded sex workers in payment for his services that when Independent Commission Against Corruption officers served a subpoena on Richo in 2014, they waited in the lobby of the five-star Sheraton in Sydney’s CBD. Richardson had gone into a room with two sex workers and as he was leaving was served.
Graham Richardson arrives at the Independent Commission Against Corruption in 2010.Credit: Kate Geraghty
When I wrote that Richo was facing his own ICAC inquiry, he went ballistic. He demanded a formal inquiry into who at ICAC has been leaking to me for 20 years.
The truth was much simpler. Instead of ICAC tipping me off, it was a mysterious listing in the NSW Supreme Court that read: Sky News v The Independent Commission Against Corruption. This is the email I sent to the news desk on August 11, 2014.
“I am still cooling my heels outside court 9B. All I learnt before the court was closed was that a journo at Sky News is objecting to receiving a summons to produce documents. ICAC wants to access all the emails and electronic diaries of one of their employees who was variously described as a political commentator or a political journalist. ICAC won’t tell the journo what the case is about.”
I also told the news desk that the legal team of barrister Bruce McClintock and solicitor Mark O’Brien was acting for the Sky News employee. I knew the pair only too well as they had acted for Eddie Obeid in 2006 when he successfully sued journalist Anne Davies and me for suggesting that he was corrupt.
On another occasion, I got a tip-off that Richo was having a cosy lunch with a young woman at the Golden Century. Maybe it’s his daughter? I asked. “They’re holding hands by the lobster tank, so I don’t think so,” my informant said.
Both the Telegraph and the Herald had photographers snapping the amorous couple leaving the restaurant. Richo, who had obviously not stuck to his “Five Dock” rule, rang the editors of both papers offering a deal. In return for not running the photo, he would give us an exclusive on how then-premier Nathan Rees was about to be rolled.
Graham Richardson and his lunch companion are photographed departing the Golden Century restaurant in August 2009.Credit: Simon Alekna
I jokingly said to tell him it was the Swiss bank account details or nothing. We declined his offer and ran the photo. Weeks later, Rees was on the steps of NSW Parliament House saying, “I will not hand over NSW to Eddie Obeid or Joe Tripodi” and declared any challenger would be a “puppet” of Obeid and Tripodi. By the end of the day, he was no longer the premier, having lost a secret ballot to Kristina Keneally.
Richardson is widely credited with creating the political career of Eddie Obeid, who has twice been jailed for misconduct in public office. Over the years, several Labor figures were adamant that Obeid paid Richardson for getting him a seat in the NSW upper house. One said the $80,000 figure “is out of the horse’s mouth”, referring to Richardson.
“All I know is that he paid Graham Richardson to get on the ticket,” said another.
But like the CJC inquiry 20 years earlier, the 2014 NSW corruption inquiry into Richo went nowhere.
Richo’s “lucky escapes” were legendary.
While NSW ALP general secretary in 1977, Richardson’s then-wife Cheryl was put on the payroll of Balmain Welding, a company owned by Richo’s friend Danny Casey, an ex-boxer and Balmain Labor Party stalwart. Balmain Welding was involved in the repair of shipping containers.
Cheryl was the company’s paid typist, even though she never went into the office. Alongside Cheryl on Balmain Welding’s payroll were a string of Sydney’s underworld crime figures. The foreman was underworld boss Stan “the Man” Smith.
When Balmain Welding came to the attention of the Woodward royal commission on drug trafficking, many of the alleged drug traffickers claimed they were working at Casey’s Balmain Welding when they were actually in the Philippines arranging drug importations. The commissioner observed it was reasonable to assume that some of the drugs were brought in via the containers.
At the very time the royal commission’s investigation of Casey was under way, Richardson – the NSW Labor Party boss – had become a silent partner in the container repair business.
Graham Richardson and his then wife Cheryl at their Ramsgate home in 1976.Credit: Martin James Brannan
It was an act of extraordinary recklessness, to say the least. Compounding it, he began lobbying the transport minister to lease railway land to Casey’s company without revealing his financial interest. His lobbying was unsuccessful.
In the middle of 1987, West Australian developer John Roberts, who founded one of the country’s largest construction and property groups in Multiplex, received a call from Richardson about donating money to the federal Labor Party. He subsequently gave $200,000 after attending Bob Hawke’s famous “gold tax” lunch on June 15, 1987. When asked whether Richardson ever got him to donate to the NSW branch of the ALP, Roberts paused, then laughed: “Put it this way, we never gave.”
Richardson later asked Roberts to do the renovations on his Killara house. In a later interview with Roberts, I asked him why Multiplex, an international building firm, would build extensions on Richardson’s house. Roberts answered: “I willingly did it. I wanted to do it. He was influential; he was going places. It was more of an in for me; I make no bones about that. Why shouldn’t I do it?”
In 1992, when media tycoon Kerry Packer was offloading assets, Eddie Obeid was offered the firm’s printing plant, Offset Alpine. Obeid’s mate, Richo, who was by now a federal Labor minister, put Obeid in touch with his stockbroker, Rene Rivkin, who was funding the purchase.
Offset Alpine’s Sydney printing plant mysteriously burned down on Christmas Eve 1993, causing the company’s share price to soar as it had recently been insured at three times its purchase price.
Rene Rivkin with Graham Richardson. Credit: Peter Wilmoth
Obeid’s oldest son, Paul, had been put on the board to look after the Obeid’s 25 per cent interest in Offset Alpine. The only problem was that – as was their wont – the Obeids hadn’t yet paid Rivkin for their quarter shareholding of the company. Despite this, behind the scenes, Eddie Obeid was insisting on sharing in the bonanza.
Years later, my colleague Linton Besser and I discovered that in December 1994, a few months after the final insurance payout was made, Obeid’s mentor Richardson transferred $1 million from his Swiss account to an account in Beirut, Lebanon. The bank account just happened to be owned by Dennis Lattouf, a close associate of the Obeid family.
The million-dollar payment appeared to be Eddie Obeid’s cut of the insurance payout.
The Offset Alpine scandal came back to haunt Rivkin and Richardson in 2003, when The Australian Financial Review revealed that the colourful stockbroker had set up Swiss bank accounts to hide the late publishing stalwart Trevor Kennedy’s and Richardson’s secret shareholdings in Offset Alpine.
Rivkin, later jailed for insider trading, told Swiss authorities, “Graham Richardson … did not want an official account in his own name and so we opened for him a portfolio called Cheshire in my account.”
The Financial Review’s revelation sparked a long-running battle between Richardson and the tax office over his Swiss account. Richardson said the substantial funds were merely gifts from Rivkin in recognition of Richardson’s “personal qualities”. The matter was eventually settled.
In July 2018, the Swiss bank account and other alleged misdeeds were at the centre of a breathtaking battle which erupted on Paul Murray Live on Sky News. The combatants were Richardson and former Federal Labor leader Mark Latham. Richardson had attacked Latham for abandoning the ALP for One Nation. Calling each other rats, dogs and shysters, the pair went at it.
Shouting at Richo, Latham reeled off a list of Richo’s wrongdoings.
“I will tell you what’s sad, taking money from Ron Medich, as you did as a lobbyist.
“I will tell you what’s sad, putting Eddie Obeid into NSW parliament.
“I will tell you what’s sad, having a wife on the payroll of Balmain Welding, when they were into organised crime … having a Swiss bank account.”
When he could get a word in, Richo denied ever having a Swiss bank account in his name. And of Balmain Welding, he said there had been a royal commission which “didn’t find Casey guilty of a bloody thing.”
Of the since-convicted murderer Ron Medich, Richo spluttered: “By the way, I stopped taking money from Ron Medich and only took it from his brother [property developer Roy] because I didn’t like the people he was mixing with.”
My own lunching relationship came to an abrupt end in 2005 when I reported crime figure Joe Meissner had revealed for the first time Richardson’s involvement in the bashing of Peter Baldwin, who was in the rival Left faction of the NSW Labor Party.
In 1976, at the age of just 26, Richardson became general secretary of the NSW Labor Party. At the time, there were bitter factional battles for control of inner-west branches.
Baldwin, a member of the Left faction, was beaten in his home on July 16, 1980. Baldwin had been investigating the rorting of the books by the Enmore branch. In his police statement, Baldwin named as suspects in his bashing underworld figures Meissner, who was the secretary of the Enmore branch, and Tom Domican, who was employed as the Marrickville mayor’s driver.
Loading
In 2005, Meissner told me in a recorded interview that it was “suggested to Tom [Domican] that Baldwin be fixed up and it developed from there”. Meissner says Domican – who has been charged with murder, attempted murder, and five conspiracies to murder, and acquitted of all of them – organised two associates to do the bashing.
When asked who had suggested this to Domican, Meissner replied: “Who else, our good friend Graham [Richardson]. Ask him.”
Richardson denied knowing anything about the bashing of Baldwin. “I’ve got no knowledge of who did it or who organised it, but they were obviously acting on a frolic of their own because it was madness.” Domican has always denied any part in Baldwin’s assault.
In a radio interview with the late John Laws, Domican said he’d been a very close friend of Richardson’s, but they’d had a falling out. Asked what Richo had done to upset him, Domican replied: “It wasn’t what he did, it was what he didn’t do … The Prince of Promises, I called him.”
On the last day of the window to sue, Richardson did just that. At the time, Fairfax settled the matter on the basis that we would be relying on the word of Meissner, a convicted criminal.
A decade later, following my revelation that Richo was the subject of his own ICAC inquiry, he abused me on his Sky News program and his column in The Australian.
“Over many years she has penned thousands of words critical of me,” he wrote.
Of the Meissner case, he wrote, “She managed to make me some easy money as well. After yet another front-page piece on me the Fairfax lawyers ran up a white flag after a simple letter from a solicitor. No court case, no high-priced QC, and a handsome cheque for which I continue to be very grateful.”
Richo concluded by telling his Sky viewers: “There’ll be no finding ever of corruption against me.”
Sadly, on this, he was right.
Get the day’s breaking news, entertainment ideas and a long read to enjoy. Sign up to receive our Evening Edition newsletter.
Read the full article here
