The Australian November 01, 2005 IT was early 2001 when Brad Cooper strolled into the bar of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Sydney's central business district. He was there to make a cash drop of $30,000.
"He had a newspaper opened towards the table and from underneath the newspaper he opened his bag up," said William Howard, the one-time chief investments officer for failed insurance company HIH. "I opened my bag up and we both helped each other to transfer the money into my bag." It was just one of the bribes that the brash Cooper gave the previously respectable and stiff-shirted Howard, and ultimately led him to the NSW Supreme Court where he was found guilty yesterday. Only minutes before he learned his fate, conman and former entrepreneur Cooper was sitting in the Campari restaurant on Sydney's Elizabeth Street sipping a mineral water. He had been camped out there all yesterday morning, preferring the sophisticated surroundings of the Italian noshery to an indefinite wait for the jury's verdict in the oppressive confines of the court across the road. It was a chance to savour the last vestiges of his high-flying lifestyle as a multi-millionaire businessman in the late 1990s with a penchant for luxury cars and a string of waterfront properties around Sydney. The former suave and fast-talking salesman was at the height of his success with his burglar alarm company Home Security International. But since the downfall of HIH in March 2001 and the subsequent liquidation of his businesses the 46-year-old is barely recognisable. He has swapped his Ferrari for taxis, has abandoned Sydney's social set, gained a dozen or so kilograms and lost his trademark bleached blond locks. Now he must swap his woollen suit and pink shirt for a green tracksuit and add convicted fraudster to his occupations that include burglar alarm salesman, entrepreneur and motivational speaker. Last night the 46-year-old former business associate of failed insurance company HIH joined former mate Rodney Adler and HIH chief Ray Williams behind bars while awaiting sentencing for bribery and deception. A jury of seven women and five men took just three days to find him guilty of 13 charges of bribery and faking a series of letters and invoices in an amateurish attempt to squeeze $11 million from the insurer in its dying, cash-strapped days. He used his friendship with HIH's chief investment officer, Howard, to con money out the insurer. While much of the evidence was technical and complex, the case was set in a world of luxury hotels, private jets, fast cars and tropical Queensland holiday resorts where he and Howard met to exchange the wads of cash, sometimes as much as $40,000. The cash bribes were allegedly paid to Howard on five occasions, in wads of $20, $50 and $100 bills, and taken away by Howard in a leather overnight bag. During his nine-week criminal trial, Cooper came across as affable and endearingly naive, exchanging pleasantries and a friendly smile with the media every day. This was in stark contrast to his former mentor Adler, or Williams, who preferred to snarl from a distance during their sentencing hearings in March and April this year. His generous and approachable nature was displayed in the overseas trips and cash loans he gave to his HSI employees and friends including Olympian Dawn Fraser and musician Jimmy Barnes, the court was told. But the prosecution portrayed his boyish charms as more akin to a bumbling criminal, saying he master-minded a simple bribery scheme and was a hopeless forger who failed to adequately cover his own tracks. By offering Howard $124,000 in cash bribes in return for smoothing the payment of up to $11 million to Cooper and his companies, he had engaged in a criminal conspiracy, the prosecution argued. The former Ferrari-driving playboy did not work for the insurer but his company, FAI Home Security International, was able to claim payments from HIH as part of its divorce from the insurer after it bought FAI Insurance from Adler in 1999. Cooper cut a lonely figure during his trial, with few family or friends sitting in the public gallery to lend him moral support. Yesterday he appeared resigned to his fate. On returning to the courtroom where he has spent the past two months to hear the verdict, his face dropped as the foreman of the jury said he was guilty of all 13 charges. Before descending the staircase of the historic wooden dock into the cells below, he kept his composure while farewelling his barrister with a firm handshake and his solicitor with a kiss, before waving a child-like goodbye to the media. It is unclear what he did with the money that he took from HIH, although the court did hear evidence that he had been living in the fast lane. He once had two waterfront properties on The Esplanade, a well-to-do strip on Sydney's Balmoral Beach and spent many weeks every year on Queensland's Hayman Island. He bought Howard a convertible BMW and himself a BMW four-wheel drive, telling Howard: "What you need is something to blow a bit of wind through your hair". "With all the trouble at HIH it would do you the world of good," Cooper said. Within weeks of their conversation in February 2001, Howard was driving around in a $118,636 green BMW convertible with beige leather seats. Cooper made an unspecificed out-of-court settlement with the HIH liquidator McGrath & Nicol partner Tony McGrath in July 2003, and no longer lives in his $4.5 million penthouse apartment in Balmoral. Prior to his trial he claimed that he did not have enough money to pay for legal representation (his current financial position is unclear). He was refused legal aid before the trial, however, he was ultimately able to scratch together enough money to pay two barristers -- including a pricey silk -- and a solicitor. It is likely the court will gain a further insight into his personal and financial circumstances when his lawyers make submissions on his sentence to judge Bruce James on December 2. They will ask friends, family and former colleagues to give evidence of his good character, his parole officer will give a statement about his behaviour while on bail, and a psychiatric report will be given. When James sentences him later in December, it will have been two years since Cooper was arrested at his Balmoral home on December 16, 2003. His arrest coincided with Howard's secret appearance in a Sydney courtroom where he pleaded guilty to two criminal charges related to bribery. The jury failed to accept Cooper's barrister's argument that Cooper's bribery and forgery-related charges were out of character for a man who had been carrying on business "without a hitch" for decades and who had led a "hitherto blameless life". Howard, who gave evidence over four days and was cross-examined for seven days, was criticised by Cooper's barrister as inconsistent, unimpressive and an unreliable witness. They argued Howard's evidence was "tainted" because he was "improperly coached" by his lawyers. Howard told the court he squirrelled the money away in a secret safety deposit box at a bank in Sydney's CBD. Cooper offered Howard a senior role at HSI as well as the cash bribes. Howard confessed to his lawyers on April 10, 2003, because he felt that investigators were closing in on him. His role as HIH supergrass was so secret that he didn't even tell his wife that he had been receiving money from Cooper until seven days before he pleaded guilty in court. When his case was first listed before the court on December 16, 2003, it was filed under a pseudonym because prosecutors were concerned for his safety. "My belief was that it was time to stop the process. Bring it to an end. Because it wasn't going to stop," he told prosecutors. The big lie was keeping him awake at night and he didn't like the person he had become since Cooper began paying him and had helped buy the BMW, he said. "I had been getting BMWs, spending money and being a person who I wasn't," the accountant said. "I went from a person who didn't want to speak to the FAI people to being in the gutter with them." Howard said in court documents that he gave some of the cash to his wife, used it to pay for luxury holidays and to gamble on horse racing. Howard said the conspiracy had ruined his life, and he had been forced into bankruptcy. "I had no money. Our home has been sold. My wife took half the proceeds. I had spent $700,000 in legal costs," he said in statements. The court also heard that Cooper duped Williams, the grey-haired chairman of HIH, into paying twice for $1.2 million in motivational seminars that were never held. He was a confidence trickster who had the temerity to write to Williams saying: "Ray, we have performed on each and every challenge no matter the size of the transaction or the height of the bar", when he was robbing Williams's company of money. When the Australian Securities and Investment Commission proudly trumpeted its coup in convincing Howard to turn star witness in December 2003, it stated he could potentially give evidence against several former HIH executives. It is not known whether his evidence was used to encourage Adler and Williams to plead guilty, or whether he will give evidence against former HIH finance director Dominic Fodera, who has been charged with six offences carrying a maximum of 14 years' jail. It is now 2 1/2 years since the HIH Royal Commission recommended charges and further investigation into the conduct of dozens of executives, and it is understood that ASIC has prepared criminal briefs against a further five others described as minor players.
