REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Thursday, February 17, 2005

FORMER high-flying businessman Rodney Adler faced a jail term after pleading guilty to charges including dishonesty and making false statements in his time as a director of failed insurer HIH.

Adler’s surprise guilty plea came on what should have been the first day of an expected four-week jury trial in the NSW Supreme Court in Sydney.

Sitting in the dock, he displayed no emotion as he answered ‘guilty’ to each of four charges read out.

Adler, who was banned in 2002 from being a company director for 20 years over trading in HIH shares, stood convicted of two criminal counts of disseminating false information arising from the same transactions.

In 2004, he lost a High Court bid to have the criminal proceedings permanently stayed on the basis he had already been penalised with the ban.

The 44-year-old was also now guilty of two charges of being intentionally dishonest as an HIH director, and of making false statements to obtain money.

Each of the four charges carried a maximum penalty of five years’ jail and fines ranging from $22,000 to $110,000.

Three charges of stock market manipulation were dropped by the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, with Adler pleading instead to the new charges.

However, Australian Securities and Investments Commission chairman Jeffrey Lucy said he was satisfied that the charges “appropriately reflect the criminality of (Adler’s) conduct”.