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Fugitive tycoon Christopher Skase dead at 53

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Australia's best-known fugitive, businessman Christopher Skase, has died of lung cancer in Spain.

For 10 years Skase, 53, evaded intensive efforts by Australia to have him extradited from his bolt-hole on the holiday island of Majorca.

Skase fled Australia in 1991 facing criminal charges over the collapse of his A$1.5 billion (HK$6 billion) Qintex empire, which he built up during the 1980s.

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He was the quintessential 1980s high-roller, funding a lavish lifestyle and acquiring all the trappings of corporate success, including a yacht, a private jet, mansions, a fleet of luxury cars and a collection of fine art.

To his business associates he will be remembered as an audacious entrepreneur and a man of vision who was unfairly victimised by successive governments.

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But to his many detractors he was a scoundrel, a thief and a liar.

He was one of the highest of Australia's high-fliers. After brief stints as a financial journalist and entrepreneur in the 1960s, he first made his mark when he bought into a Victoria-based tin mining company, Qintex, in the mid-1970s. In 1975 he became chairman, and within a decade the company had diversified, paying A$34 million for a Queensland television station.

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