An insider trades outside for inside


An insider trades outside for inside - 30th May 2003
(Credit: Sydney Morning Herald)


As a businessmen he kept the usual company. As an individual he kept some unusual company. Kate Askew writes about the demise of Sydney's most successful business self-publicist.

Prisons are places where hard men, soft principles and a black disregard for human existence make winners out of losers. These are not the sort of attributes likely in white-collar criminals bound for a life behind bars. Yet some of the people the eccentric stockbroker Rene Rivkin associated with during the past decade may have given him a valuable insight into the underworld into which he is about to sink.

Yesterday in the Supreme Court Justice Anthony Whealy sentenced Rivkin to nine months of periodic detention.

Rivkin's best mate, the former Labor politician Graham Richardson, told the court during a pre-sentencing submission that Rivkin had helped many people during his life. One of those, Richardson said, was a man who had got out of jail and whom Rivkin had helped get on his feet.

Could he have meant Nathan Jones, nickname the Colossus of Boggo Road, briefly Rivkin's former minder? After Jones's release from the Brisbane prison, Rivkin set him and his wife and stepchild up in an Alexandria apartment, took him to see Jeff Fenech to gauge his talent as a boxer, arranged a chat with the agent Harry M. Miller, and put him through a computer course. Hopefully Rivkin managed to get some tips about life in the clink in return.

Questioned about his social preferences by The Sunday Age in 1994, Rivkin acknowledged that he enjoyed the company of people who were younger than himself. He had been spending a good deal of time in a Potts Point coffee shop: "I have been adopted by the people there, who are from all walks of life. Some of them are plumbers; some of them are unemployed. One is a tattooist."

Certainly there was an array of people in attendance for Rivkin's most recent courtroom stint who were not the usual types who attend the Supreme Court of NSW.

The first date for Rivkin's submissions - postponed due to a delay in getting a psychiatric assessment - saw a trio who had obviously seen hard times: one woman wore sandals and carried copious plastic bags, and was accompanied by a pitifully thin female with bedraggled hair and a male friend dressed in the jacket of a volunteer to the 2000 Paralympic Games. They approached Rivkin after the matter was adjourned to offer their support. Rivkin clearly was acquainted with the individuals and thanked them.

The woman carrying the plastic bags waited for Rivkin outside the courtroom yesterday after his sentencing. Inside, as the sentence was handed down, another woman yelled from the court balcony, "Shame on you [the court], the country still loves you [Rivkin]."

Now 58, Rivkin was born in Shanghai to White Russian parents who were migrating east after World War II. He attended Rose Bay Public School and Sydney Boys' High School before studying law at Sydney University. But the self-confessed "trading addict" moved into stockbroking after completing his degree. He has owned several stockbroking firms and publishes the stockmarket tipsheet The Rivkin Report.

During his halcyon years as Sydney's most visible financial entrepreneur, he was a promoter's dream with his trademarks cigar and worry beads. And he garnered a reputation for kindness to friends as well as strangers. In 1997 Rivkin bought a bright yellow Ferrari for Joe Elcham, former owner of Joe's Cafe in Kings Cross. The gift followed the Casino Control Authority's rejection of Elcham's application to be a shareholder in Rivkin's Cave nightclub, which it had been planned Elcham would oversee.

"I was knocked back, I'm not approved, I'm not part of the Cave and they took that away from me with one mighty swoop; the almighty Casino Control Authority," Elcham told The Sun-Herald in 1998.

It should be noted that Elcham arranged for John "Serpico" Deerfield, the former undercover policeman working in drugs and gaming who turned whistleblower, to meet Rivkin after the departure of his personal assistant Gordon Woods, according to the same report. (Woods's girlfriend, Caroline Byrne, was found dead at the bottom of the famed Sydney suicide spot, The Gap, resulting in a police investigation. There has never been any suggestion that Rivkin was in any way connected with the death.)

It was Elcham, Deerfield, former business partner Nigel Littlewood, Rivkin's helicopter pilot, George Freris, and Simon Main (Barry Crocker's stepson), among others, who travelled with Rivkin on a 1997 all-expenses paid European holiday, Deerfield told the Sun-Herald.

In fact, Rivkin has all but disappeared from the conventional business social scene in recent years. He still hosts lunches on his luxury motor yacht - Dajoshadita, the name an amalgam of his five children's names - and is generous in making it available for charity events. Nevertheless, when push came to shove, an array of high-profile people were willing to stand up and be counted as Rivkin's friends.

Those who made submissions before Rivkin's sentencing yesterday included the TV personality Ray Martin, radio host Alan Jones, former newsreader and now charity chief Gina Boon, Trevor Kennedy, Kerry Packer's one-time offsider, and property developer John Boyd.

Labor factional warrior and federal MP Laurie Brereton also provided a written submission, despite the fact that they had not spent much time in each other's company in recent years.

Richardson gave a light-hearted performance in the witness box while the Australian Olympic Committee head, John Coates, also spoke.

Jones chose to put it down on paper: "I write in relation to Mr Rene Rivkin whom I have known for a long time. I can honestly say I have rarely met a more compassionate, committed and caring person.

"When I was coach of the Australian rugby side and the rugby team at Oxford University, I piloted a scheme to assist young Australians of academic and sporting ability to study at Oxford. Rene Rivkin personally funded some of those who went, as did I. He did more than fund them. He met them, followed their progress and subsequently employed two of them."

Martin was equally as effusive: "I know him to be honest, ethical and a man who quite strictly observes the parameters of Australian society. Therefore, I find Mr Rivkin's behaviour, as reflected by the recent court verdict which found him guilty of insider trading, perplexing and out of character.

"In my capacity as host of countless charity and fundraising events, I have found Rene Rivkin to be uncommonly generous in his personal and financial support of disadvantaged people. Frankly, I do not know of any Australian public figure more compassionate and more giving."

Brereton touched upon Rivkin's family life, saying he had known the stockbroker, his wife and their five children as a happy family whose company his own family enjoyed.

"Given that I have known Rene for so long I feel qualified to vouch unreservedly as to his good character. While he is personally eccentric and sometimes voluble such should not distract from the fact that he is a very good man," Brereton said.

In fact, it was Rivkin's wife of 31 years, Gayle, who made the most surprising observations about her husband.

She said Rivkin had been unbearable to live with since the jury's guilty verdict. "It's a nightmare I can't wake out of," she told the court on Monday.

Rivkin's manic episodes - diagnosed by a medical expert for Rivkin's sentencing - have long been a factor in upheavals in his life. It was this "unbearable" side to his personality that caused a rift in his stockbroking business in the late '80s. Rivkin fled briefly to London with his family after the split with his then partners. His client list at the time was blue chip: Kerry Packer, Sir Peter Abeles, Lee Ming Tee and Alan Bond.

Interestingly, the same medical expert suggested that Rivkin take less Prozac, as it was probably worsening his manic episodes. He also noted that Rivkin had not sought help for his mental condition for 10 years.

Yet it has been Rivkin's manic depression that has been on the tip of everyone's tongue for the last couple of months. "He won't speak to anyone, even his wife, when he's in a big depression," Richardson told the Herald after the jury's verdict had been handed down.

What is without doubt is the fact that Rivkin is a publicity junkie. He regularly uses his situation to generate publicity. Straight after the jury's verdict he spent two hours on Richardson's radio program. An earlier interview with the ABC's Andrew Denton was aired after the verdict. Rivkin did not hold back during the wide-ranging interview.

Among other things he gave his candid view of what he thought was the complicated relationship between James and Kerry Packer, a move unlikely to win him an invitation back into the Packer family's purple circle.

Rivkin said: "One day I get a phone call: 'I'm sending my f---ing son over and I want you to lose him some f---ing money on the stockmarket so he understands the f---ing value of the f---ing dollar.' " Rivkin will again star on Denton's program, Enough Rope, next Monday in a follow-up post-sentencing interview.

Can he turn periodic detention to his advantage? Of course he can.

But he could also show a little shame.

Links:

The Sydney Morning Herald