EUR: How Australia lost the extradition case against Skase

AAP General News (Australia)
08-06-2001
EUR: How Australia lost the extradition case against Skase

Don Woolford, then AAP's Chief European Correspondent, was in Palma in 1994 to cover
the extradition hearing against Christopher Skase and his later release. Here he recounts
proceedings



By Don Woolford

On a steamy Mediterranean summer day seven years ago, the Australian government had
its one day in court with Christopher Skase.

It was a bizarre day, and the start of six strange months which ended with the fugitive
businessman finally defeating the first and best chance to force him back to Australia.

Following an extradition request by Australia, the Spanish arrested Skase in February 1994.

Because of his health he was held in hospital in Palma, the capital of Majorca, the
resort island where Skase was living in surprising comfort, given he'd told an earlier
bankruptcy hearing that his assets were worth only $5,000.

The extradition application was heard by three judges of the Audiencia Nacional, the
rough equivalent of the Federal Court, in Palma in June.

It was a curiously short and informal hearing.

Skase, brought to court by ambulance, sat throughout in a wheelchair, taking regular
sniffs from an oxygen cylinder.

The application was run for Australia by Eduardo Fungairino, a senior crown prosecutor
from Madrid, who was also in a wheelchair, in his case permanently. He was known as Spain's
Perry Mason.

Skase also had a senior counsel from Madrid, plus his long-time Palma solicitor, the
dapper Antonio Coll.

Leading the Australian legal advisers was now High Court judge Ian Callinan QC. He
remarked that he couldn't recall a day in court before when he hadn't opened his mouth.

Most of the proceedings were in Spanish and there was no formal translation into English.

That guaranteed a constantly noisy court as the Australian journalists there were given
whispered, disjointed translations from their own translators sitting beside them.

The hearing scarcely touched the substance of the extradition case - 32 charges under
the Australian Companies Code. That was dealt with through written submissions.

It was all about his health, and the risks to it of flying him back to Australia. At
that point, it was lung disease. The stomach cancer which apparently contributed to his
death must have developed later.

Both sides wheeled up doctors and experts in medical aviation.

Towards the end, Skase made a brief statement in Spanish, saying he feared he would
die if forced to fly back to Australia.

Given his medical accoutrements, his voice sounded strong.

About three months later, the court agreed that the case had been made out for extradition
so far as the Company Code charges were concerned, although it knocked back some others
under the Bankruptcy Act.

But it was troubled by the health question and appeared to have a bob each way by ordering
that he go home by ship.

Australian authorities thought this was mad and almost certainly more dangerous to
him than a plane flight.

But they started looking into options, including the use of a warship.

This search, however, was overtaken by Skase's appeal to Spain's highest court, the
Constitutional Court, from which there is no appeal.

There was no public sitting of this court, which worked entirely from submissions.

Finally, in December, it found the risk to Skase's health was too great and, as its
judgment revealed, the weight of evidence went that way.

For every doctor the Spanish and Australian authorities quoted, Skase had several.

For every aviation expert, ditto.

In gathering an apparently very impressive array of international experts, he had outspent
his pursuers.

He was released immediately from the hospital which had been his not-too-onerous prison
for about 10 months.

And that afternoon, at the gates of his expansive villa with glorious views over the
fishing harbour of Puerto Andraitx - safely distant from the high-rise hotels for the
German and British package tourists - gave a rare news conference.

His main theme, an old one, was that he was being persecuted by the Australian government.

In pursuing this, he compared himself with Terry Waite, who had been a hostage for
years in Lebanon, and even more brazenly, Nelson Mandela.

He didn't look strong. But he stood unaided and his voice was steady. He didn't talk
for long, but that was because - and he was quite open about this - he wanted to auction
his story.

So how sick was he then?

He was not well. A spokesman for then attorney-general Michael Lavarch certainly exaggerated
when proclaiming him ``as fit as a mallee bull''.

But he looked stronger - and periodic later sightings of him walking the dogs tended
to confirm this - than the expert opinions he'd gathered and the medical props he had
used would have had you believe.

It is difficult to believe that, with medical backup on hand, he wouldn't have survived
a flight home seven years ago.

AAP dw/jc/br

KEYWORD: SKASE EXTRADITION AAP BACKGROUNDER

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