Rivkin Associate Denies $500,000 Bequest
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday July 6, 2007
GEORGE FRERIS agrees the late Rene Rivkin was generous, giving him a $250,000 Sydney apartment, a $400,000 parcel of shares, four cars including a Lotus and a Hummer, an "expensive" watch and many holidays.
But he had not received a secret $500,000 bequest after the disgraced stockbroker died in May 2005, Mr Freris told the Federal Magistrates Court yesterday.Now 38, Mr Freris recounted meeting Mr Rivkin at Joe's Cafe in Potts Point in 1991. Initially they were friends, meeting in cafes "almost every day".Two years later Mr Rivkin set him up in a tattoo business and, when it failed, hired him as a chauffeur. Mr Freris later looked after his boss's cars, helicopter and boat, and joined him as an investor in property development and shares.The relationship ended in 2003 when Mr Rivkin threatened "I will effing destroy you", Mr Freris told an examination called by the trustee of Mr Rivkin's bankrupt deceased estate.Mr Freris was "very happy with what I got" but described his benefactor as "overbearing, overcontrolling and I would even have to say ... megalomaniacal".The trustee, Anthony Warner, of the accounting firm CRS Warner Sanderson, is investigating whether assets that should be available to the estate's creditors are hidden in Australia or overseas.The largest creditor is the Tax Office, which last year issued the estate with a bill for $29 million in back tax.Mr Freris recalled a September 2005 report in The Australian Financial Review that a 1994 document handwritten by Mr Rivkin had surfaced in Switzerland which read: "Re George Freris. I wish to leave George Freris $500,000 Australian currency in the event of my death. I do not wish any member of my family to know about this bequest."Mr Freris recounted ringing Bank Leumi, in Zurich, on whose letterhead the note was written. A manager, whose name he could not recall, said: "I know Mr Rivkin - I don't know you. I have never met you, I know nothing of any document you are discussing."Mr Freris said he let the matter drop. "To be honest, I wrote it off as a journalistic lie," he said.Another unreliable document was a 2002 memo to Mr Freris signed by Mr Rivkin that said: "As per our discussion today, I will accept $248,000 as the full payment" for loans totalling $654,040.The figures were wrong, Mr Freris said, and "Later on he said, don't worry about it, you don't owe me anything".Mr Freris resigned his $100,000-a-year job after "inappropriate behaviour between one of Rivkin's employees and some women including my wife".The employee left, "but my wife was not happy - she was thinking about possibly going down a legal route on that front and he said if your wife goes down a legal route I will effing destroy you".
© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald