The
Sun-HeraldThe
terrible toll on my family: Adler
By Annette Sharp and Alex
Mitchell
Adler leaving court this week. Photo: Simon O’Dwyer
RODNEY Adler has spoken for the first time about the impact the investigation into the HIH collapse has had on his family.
Adler, who will be sentenced next month after pleading guilty to four criminal charges in the
Supreme Court on Wednesday, said his wife and children had been under tremendous strain as a consequence of the regulator’s four-year investigation into the insurer’s multibillion-dollar collapse.
“The events of the past four years have taken a tremendous toll on my family and I believe that the reality of this will only sink in after my sentencing hearing,” Adler told The
Sun-Herald.
None of Adler’s family – his wife of 17 years
Lyndi and their children Jason, 16, Romi, 14,
Natalie, 10, and Charlotte, 7 – were
[sic. was] in court to hear his guilty plea.
But the former high-flying businessman denied the couple’s marriage has been tested or weakened by the ordeal, saying that they have been brought closer by recent events.
“Lyndi has been
unbelievable,” he said. “She did not sign up for
this job. We’ve been married nearly 18 years and
it’s as good as it’s ever been.”
The same will probably go for their bank-accounts — at present: but future rewards will no doubt pile up in journalists’ heaven.
They know which side their bread is buttered on, Down
Under. Just to remind our readers, here is one of those Nice Folks
Next Door who ran a bogus insurance operation for years, bilked thousands of
Diggers out of their life savings, fought a four year court battle at Australian taxpayer expense to avoid jail, then finally admitted that, yes, he had been guilty as charged all along. Now this Adler is worried about going to jail — where he may be obliged to play the mouth-organ a bit
(and not quite as well as his namesake
Larry Adler); and he is worried about his poor wife and kids. Bit late for that, methinks. Yes, they have some
People of Character in Australia, when we come to think of it. We wonder where all those millions went; and where the Adlers will go too, when the time comes — to which safehaven country, we mean.
Adler pleaded guilty to two charges relating to the dissemination of false information to the sharemarket and two charges of failing to disclose
“adverse information” about a sideline business. He faces up to 20 years jail when his sentencing hearing begins on March 29.
The guilty plea followed an agreement being reached with the Australian Securities and
Investments Commission and the Commonwealth
Director of Public Prosecutions which saw three other charges relating to market manipulation dropped.
The deal is expected to see his jail term reduced to a lesser term, if he is jailed by the court. This will enable him to return to his
“shattered” family sooner.
“I am expecting that the judge takes into consideration not just this very short period of my life, but my life in total,” he said.
Adler said he had not yet decided if any of his family would attend his sentencing hearing to appeal on his behalf.
“Ultimately it will be a family decision if they accompany me and I’ll take advice from my legal team,” he said.
Family sources said on Friday that Adler did not want his children to see him “embarrassed and demeaned” in court.
A friend said the Adler
family was
desperate
to move on: “Rod wants to
put that period of his life behind him. He
doesn’t want it to go on for a decade. It has
already been four and a half years of
hell.”
Since her husband’s humiliating and public fall from grace in 2001, Mrs Adler has withdrawn from the public eye.
In 2002 she resigned her position as founding chairman of the Sydney Children’s Hospital’s fund-raising Gold Dinner, the biggest fund-raising event on the Sydney social calendar, and has not been to a society event since.
Mrs Adler spent last Monday and Tuesday at
Adler’s side as he consulted legal teams from
Gilbert & Tobin and Swaab & Associates and his barrister Elizabeth Fullerton – honorary members of the family for more than half of young
Charlotte Adler’s life.
This followed a weekend in which the family sought comfort in routine activities.
They had brunch at fashionable Bondi restaurant
Hugo’s last Saturday morning, but photos of the gathering depict a rather grim picture of a family looking worn by the battle to clear Adler’s name.
If jailed, Adler will be classified a minimum-security prisoner and is likely to serve his sentence at the John Morony correctional centre at Windsor, 60 kilometres from Sydney’s central business district.
He will enter the prison system at Silverwater jail next door to Sydney Olympic Park where a committee will interview him before giving him a security classification.
The Morony centre, which houses 550 inmates, is considered his most likely destination because it is a low-risk facility where Macquarie Bank high flyer Simon Hannes served his sentence for insider trading.[Rodney Adler]