Oakajee ‘saviour’ Roland Bleyer hits back ANDREW BURRELL THE AUSTRALIAN APRIL 26, 2014 12:00AM Print Save for later Oakajee ‘saviour’ hits backRoland Bleyer pictured in 1985. He was the founder of Bleyer Clinique. Picture: Alan Pryke Source: News Corp Australia < PrevNext > •• Bleyer spruiks his talents. Bleyer spruiks his talents. Source: Supplied HE is the $6.5 billion man who claims to have uncovered a secret funding source in the Cayman Islands to rescue one of Australia’s biggest planned infrastructure projects, the Oakajee port and rail network in Western Australia.
But Sydney dealmaker Roland Frank Bleyer, or “Sir Roland Bleyer” as he has described himself on business cards, has a spectacularly colourful past — a history that should have been apparent to Perth explorer Padbury Mining long before it signed him up as its $6.5bn Oakajee backer.
Mr Bleyer’s background includes a string of civil and criminal cases brought against him in the US, where he lived for many years.
Among them are several fraud allegations, an arrest for cocaine possession in California, a further arrest in New York, as well as court records of domestic violence allegations brought by two women.
As The Australian revealed this week, he was also named by a Federal Court judge in Sydney as the key player in a credit card scam against ANZ Bank in the 1990s.
A decade earlier, Mr Bleyer first came to national attention over his role in a controversial business that used animal foetal cells to treat children with Down syndrome. At the time, he ran a chain of hair regrowth, weight loss and cosmetic surgery clinics in Australia and the US.
In more recent years, Mr Bleyer — aka Roland Husner — says he held business meetings with Lebanon’s prime minister, Rafic Hariri, before he was assassinated in 2005, and to have been part of negotiations in 2010 with the cash-strapped Greek government to lend it billions of euros.
The globetrotting finance man also says he was appointed “chairman of the finance committee” for RoyalBank in Azerbaijan in 2010, before it collapsed in 2012.
And Mr Bleyer claims to have been kidnapped for one night by “gangsters” in London in 2000, and released only after paying a ransom.
But the 67-year-old is reluctant for too many details of his eventful life and career to be published, yesterday threatening to sue newspapers and individual journalists for printing false allegations about him.
The Weekend Australian has also learnt that Mr Bleyer recently launched legal action against search-engine giant Google in Australia in an attempt to remove negative content about him from the internet.
And he is suing a Miami-based website, OffshoreAlert, over serious allegations against him made by a contributor to the site.
David Marchant, the owner of the site which investigates financial crime, said yesterday he was stunned to learn of Padbury Mining’s agreement with Mr Bleyer in Australia.
“No credible person would ever get involved with Roland Bleyer,” he said.
In response, an angry Mr Bleyer said he believed the focus on him since the Padbury deal was announced on April 11 might be driven by anti-Semitism because he had Jewish blood.
“What’s wrong with you people? What did I ever do wrong?” he said.
Mr Bleyer said he had never been found guilty of fraud or any crime, nor had he ever breached a legal contract. “I don’t mind the free press and I’ve spent a lot of money advertising in the press over the years,” he said.
“But why are reporters and newspapers against the working man of this great nation?
“I’ve never been convicted of any crime, be it in Australia or anywhere else internationally.”
Mr Bleyer admitted he had been arrested in Los Angeles in the 1990s over cocaine allegations, but said it was a misunderstanding caused by California’s “zero-tolerance” policy and the case against him was thrown out of court the next morning.
His arrest took place during a party at his Beverly Hills home, when one of his guests, a “beautiful model”, had locked herself in his upstairs bathroom.
“I called the police because I didn’t know what to do,” he said.
“They came and they went up to see how they could get her out of the bathroom.
“She was taken away in an ambulance and they found some (drug) paraphernalia. With zero tolerance, if others use substances you become charged for it.
“So I was arrested for allegedly a breach of the zero-tolerance laws on drugs in California.”
Mr Bleyer was more reluctant to discuss his 1995 arrest in New York, saying the case “involved Secret Service and undercover people” and he was bound not to talk about it publicly.
“I was asked to assist certain agents to prevent crimes in one city and the other city didn’t know, and I got arrested in another city,” he said.
“I can’t tell you more than that — I don’t want to risk my life.
“I was bailed the same day by a judge.”
Mr Bleyer denied he had ever been accused in court of domestic violence.
Asked about US court records that refer to two separate cases of “domestic violence” brought by two women, he said he had never even heard of one of the complainants.
He admitted the second woman had taken out a restraining order against him, but said they remained friends after that.
“I think domestic violence is one of those things they tick just to get the judge to quickly give them a restraining order,” he said.
Mr Bleyer said the money for Padbury Mining’s bid to revive the Oakajee project would come from a bank in the Cayman Islands and be delivered through a company he ultimately controls, Superkite Pty Ltd, which was part of a global network of equity investors.
He was attracted to the Oakajee project because he wanted to help create jobs and investment in Australia.
“The Western Australian government is not building the infrastructure — it can’t afford to,” he said.
“So it’s being done privately between Australian companies and one Australian company that’s part of a global network.”
Padbury, a company with a market value of less than $70 million, told the ASX on April 11 that it had struck a deal with unnamed private investors who would provide the $6.5bn to build Oakajee.
Investors sent Padbury’s share price up as much as 170 per cent during the day, with volume approaching 200 million.
But after four hours of frenzied trading, the ASX and Australian Securities & Investments Commission stepped in to demand Padbury reveal the identity of the equity investors.
Padbury has since been in a trading halt and has promised to publish details of its agreements, but has now failed to do so three times — most recently on Thursday when it said it needed even more time.
The company’s next self-imposed deadline to keep the market informed is next week.
Last week, Padbury said it was still seeking further information from investors.
PDY Price at posting:
3.3¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
