Gravely ill billionaire Richard Pratt is believed to have told his lawyers that he wants to prove his innocence against four charges of providing misleading information to an ACCC inquiry into a price-fixing cartel that Visy ran with its rival Amcor.
While Pratt confessed to operating the cartel with Visy, the Office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions bought criminal charges against Pratt last year after the ACCC alleged he had provided them with false evidence.
But Pratt continues to protest his innocence and wants the charges dropped before his imminent death.
“Richard Pratt has always maintained the charges should never have been brought in the first place. Obviously, (he) wants to clear his name,” Pratt’s lawyer Leon Zwier said yesterday.
“If the ACCC or the Director of Public Prosecutions wish to withdraw the charges because they accept they should never have been laid in the first place, well, that’s a matter for the ACCC or DPP. Mr Pratt has always taken the view that he’s innocent of these charges.”
The case has been stalled since early February, when Federal Court judge Donnell Ryan reserved his judgement on whether a signed statement could be used as evidence in the criminal trial.
Pratt’s legal team argues that the statement was intended to be used to settle a civil dispute and was not a general admission that can be used against him in criminal proceedings.
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James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
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