A SHROUD of secrecy has been imposed over a pitched legal battle between Australia's second richest man and investigators who are probing allegedly corrupt share dealings among the nation's most powerful companies.
The extraordinary media blackout is the latest fall-out from the investigation into how the 1986 hostile takeover of Australia's biggest company, BHP, was thwarted by companies led by Elders-IXL (now called Foster's Brewing Group).
It highlights why many of the nation's most senior businessmen are quaking in their boardrooms.
Australian newspapers were prevented last Tuesday from publishing anything on the battle between Richard Pratt and the National Crime Authority (NCA). Judge David Harper of the Victoria Supreme Court will reconsider the media blackout tomorrow. But in the interim even knowledge of the ban itself is suppressed.
Mr Pratt, whose Visy Board group of packaging companies has earned him the nickname the Cardboard King and a personal wealth of A$1.2 billion (HK$6.87 billion), has already seen his close friend John Elliott, the former Foster's Brewing Company boss, charged with theft and fraud relating to the affair.
Elliott is facing committal proceedings over $66 million in phoney foreign exchange payments allegedly made in return for a New Zealand-based company's help in blocking the BHP takeover.
