How the Swiss Banking Corporation was defrauded of $70 million, which finished up paying off the creditors of a battling Australian businessman, Malcolm Edwards.
Ben Hills
THE Gnomes of Zurich are punctual and precise. That is why we can now be certain that it was at exactly 9.54 on the morning of Tuesday, December 5, 1989, that the world's greatest bank robbery began, in a back office of the mighty Swiss Bank Corporation's imposing building at No 6 Paradeplatz, the city's central square.
There were no secret tunnels required, no explosives or thermal lances penetrating the vaults, no men in hockey masks carrying M16s. At 9.54 precisely a man by the name of Basant Singh, a Malay of Indian ethnic background who had for three years been a trusted employee in the bank's investigation group - its troubleshooting team - simply slipped a small piece of paper into the system.
How council bungling cost residents of a Sydney suburb dearly
Ben Hills
FROM a muddy slope, scraped bare by bulldozers and overlooking the bombed-out ruins of a soap factory, juts the stump of what was once a huge, spreading Moreton Bay fig tree, a local landmark for the best part of a century.
If anything symbolises the issues involved in the battle for Balmain it is this tree, hacked down nearly a year ago and still awaiting the brass plaque the local council insists the developer must screw onto the stump - engraved with a sort of obituary confessing how the dastardly deed was done, in defiance of local planning laws.
How crooks and con-men wrecked a little Gippsland credit union.
Ben Hills
Twas four days before Christmas 1989, but there was no festive spirit in that small, neon-lit office 12 floors above Melbourne's heaving holiday throngs. A block away, noels carolled from the public address systems of a dozen tinsel-decked depart-ment stores, and bearded bolster-bellied Santas accosted small children in Bourke Street mall. But in the boardroom of the Credit Co-operatives Reserve Board, you could have heard a snowflake fall.
Around the oval, ash-veneered table sat nine men and one woman, the directors and chief executive of this government regulator which, although little-known to the public, is responsible by law for the safety of the savings of more than a mil-lion Victorians, and the financial security of the$2 billion in assets controlled by the State's "people's banks" - the credit unions.
The Apia Club. A severed goat’s head signals the end of Sydney’s oldest ethnic club.
Ben Hills
THE pasta was inedible. The roast chicken spurted blood when you sank a knife into it. But the "schnitzel" was the last straw - instead of juicy slices of chicken or veal, the waiters plonked platters of objects like greyish sandshoe insoles on the table. That was when the riot began.
As plates of food were upended on the table and hurled to the floor, Italian insults were shouted and the manager, Tony Boniciolli, was terrified. "I thought they were going to kill me," he said. "I have seen some pretty bad food in my time, but this was the worst ... some of the kids even had to be taken to hospital."
The alms race. How charities rip you off, spending most of your money on everything except the worthy cause.
Ben Hills
A strolling accordionist plays a rousing Scottish air among the giant cardboard cactuses ... waiters in convict garb pour the cabernet and chardonnay ... ladies in leis ladle out tacos and dim sim ... and Michael G. Downes surveys the multicultural carnival and declares: "The only thing better than a recession for our business is a war."
The granny killer John Wayne Glover murdered his last victim while bungling police sat outside in a car.
Ben Hills
Police could have arrested the "granny killer" John Wayne Glover more than three weeks earlier than they did - saving the life of his last victim.
Investigations by the Herald over the past 12 months have discovered that police bungled an inquiry into an attack by Glover on an elderly woman in a nursing home, allowing his reign of terror to continue.