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Mathew Scott

When financier Michael Bastion plunged to the pavement from the sixth floor of his plush apartment on Happy Valley's Shiu Fai Terrace in March 2000, no one knew whether he had jumped or been thrown to his death.
It is a mystery that has remained unsolved. But now fresh claims about the manner in which Bastion met his end at age 39 could reignite the case.
Bastion's former business partner, ex-England  field-hockey captain James Neale - now serving a life sentence after Australia's largest ever Ecstasy bust - has claimed Bastion was murdered by triad henchmen who cornered the businessman and demanded he repay  huge debts.
Neale claims the triads then transferred Bastion's debt to him, knowing that at the time of Bastion's death Neale owed him more than HK$3 million from a failed wine venture. 
Instead of the cash, Neale claims, the gangsters forced him to smuggle 270,000 Ecstasy tablets into Australia. They were found inside wine bottles in a Sydney warehouse in 2000.
'I had never been to Australia nor had any business ties here,' Neale told Sydney's Sun-Herald newspaper from his prison cell in the New South Wales countryside. 
'[The triads] said to me: 'You saw what happened to Bastion. Unless you do this, we will do the same to you.' [Bastion] didn't jump. They threw him out the window.' 
At the time of his death, Bastion's heady lifestyle of cocaine, Wan Chai bargirls and gambling had begun to crumble.  
The New Zealand-born charmer had conned some of Hong Kong racing's biggest names out of more than HK$200 million - and questions were starting to be asked about the get-rich-quick schemes that were, in fact, part of a massive Ponzi  scheme.
Almost a decade on, the rancour still lingers for those caught up in Bastion's web of deceit. 
A number of Hong Kong racing figures contacted by the Sunday Morning Post confirmed that before his death, Bastion had been laying heavy bets in Macau and with illegal bookmakers in Hong Kong. As pressure was applied to repay those debts, his cocaine use increased, and his behaviour became more and more erratic.
None of those contacted were prepared to be named in this article for fear of recriminations from the underworld figures involved with Bastion. 
'He was involved with some serious characters. To tell the truth, there were a lot of people happy to see him gone,' one Hong Kong gambler said.
'Some very powerful people lost millions, and there have been rumours swirling around ever since. Some say it was triads, some say triads hired by other people to collect debts. The only thing people agree on is that there is no way a guy kills himself by jumping from the sixth floor.' 
Hong Kong police ruled Bastion's death accidental, while a later inquest returned an open finding. Traces of cocaine were found in Bastion's body.
In the weeks leading up to his demise, Bastion had been 'closing' a series of Wan Chai bars - throwing his credit card to the mamasans and telling them to shut up shop and service him and his mates. 'He'd pretty much lost the plot,' another gambler said. 'And those cards were the only credit he had left.'
It wasn't always the case. To fund his lush living, Bastion had rifled millions from the likes of former Hong Kong-based trainer David Hayes, former Jockey Club chief stipendiary John 'The Sheriff' Schreck and former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke. He had promised them returns of 60 per cent on their investments but was simply funnelling money around from new investors.
Neale - who played 42 matches for England's field-hockey team in the 1970 and '80s and had become known as 'Champagne Jimmy' for his habit of toasting his team after victories - had become a mainstay of the Hong Kong  racing scene as the 1990s drew to a close, mingling with the city's richest gamblers, its jockeys and its trainers. He had started a wine-trading company with Bastion, hence, the police claimed, the ease with which Neale was able to import the Ecstasy tablets into Australia.
Neale's  lawyer said the fresh claims would be used in an application on behalf of his client to the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal.
'We are preparing to approach the Supreme Court to make an application to review [Neale's] conviction on the basis of fresh evidence we have received following inquiries in the past three months in Hong Kong,' lawyer Paul Hardin  told The Sun-Herald.
Mr Hardin claims Neale's story has been backed by a former triad 'debt collector'' who answered an advertisement, placed in the Chinese press, offering a HK$100,000 reward for anyone who could help overturn Neale's   conviction.
Neale was convicted in 2000 of shipping into Australia 940 cases of wine pre-packed with 105kg of Ecstasy pills in the French village of Saint-Emilion.  
When he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years - reduced to 14 years with no parole - the judge described him as 'intelligent, manipulative and calculating'.



Financier was murdered by triads, business partner says