Australia wants to swap Skase for load of dates

Christopher Skase, the former Australian tycoon who has lived in the Port of Andratx for ten years and is wanted for questioning in connection with 32 charges of fraud, described himself in his first television interview in the past decade on Sunday night, as “a modern Ned Kelly”. “I'm supposedly the most disliked person in Australia,” Skase, who left Australia with corporate debts of $AU1.5 billion and personal debts of $172 million, told John Laws for Foxtel. The interview has been topping radio and television news headlines for the past two days and Skase, who fought off an extradition attempt in Palma in 1994, claimed that the Australian government “paid cash, first of all to people in 1994 to try and influence the outcome of the extradition case,” and Skase says he has good records of people who were “at the receiving end.” When quizzed about the 32 criminal charges against him, Skase, when asked if he is innocent of every single one answered “correct.” Skase said that the reason the Australian government has continued to pursue him, given that he told interviewer John Laws that he has done nothing wrong, is because it is a cover up. “There is a lot to cover up from the huge amount, we believe the total is somewhere in the region of $24 million,” that has been spent on the chase for Skase. Skase says that he does not know why the chase continues.