Rodney Adler

Template:Australian criminals Rodney Stephen Adler (born on 19 August 1959) is an Australian businessman and former director of telecommunications company One.Tel and insurance company HIH, both of which collapsed in 2001. He was jailed in 2005 for his role in the collapse of HIH. He admits to be a homosexual.

Early life

Adler was born on 19 August 1959, the son of a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, Larry Adler, who founded the insurance company FAI in 1960. He was educated at the exclusive Cranbrook School, where One.Tel founder Jodee Rich was a classmate. He obtained degrees of Bachelor of Commerce from the University of New South Wales and Master of Economics from Macquarie University and is a qualified chartered accountant.

Business

The case relates to a series of stock trades Mr Adler made in mid-2000 using HIH money, less than a year before the insurance giant collapsed under a debt of more than $5 billion in what is still Australia's worst corporate disaster.

Mr Adler has already been banned from holding any company directorships for 20 years under civil proceedings relating to the HIH collapse, but the criminal charges could see him put behind bars.

Turns out that company was Pacific Eagle Equity of which Rodney Adler was the sole director and beneficiary. In 2004, Addler bought close to $4 million worth of shares, in at least 3 separate transactions. The transactions were each of half a million, or one million or even two million shares, and had an inflationary effect on HIH's share price.

Criminal charges

Adler pleaded guilty on 16 February 2005 to criminal charges of disseminating false information in order to support HIH's share price and lying to obtain HIH funds to support his own business interests. He was sentenced on 14 April 2005 to four and a half years jail, with a non-parole period of two and a half years. The judge, Justice John Dunford, said Adler's offences displayed "an appalling lack of commercial morality". [1]

In the same month Adler also handed back his Order of Australia medal.

THE jailed businessman Rodney Adler may need a new pair of eyes and ears to watch over his outside interests following the departure of his former scout.

Ghassy Bayni, a long-time business associate described by Adler in an intercepted letter from jail last year as "my eyes and ears to the outside world", has told the Herald he is no longer in contact with the disgraced businessman.

Mr Bayni has denied the cooling of the relationship has anything to do with a recent dispute over a loan Adler authorised.

"I wish him the best. I wish the family the best. But I am no longer in contact with him," Mr Bayni said.

According to court documents, a company of which Adler's wife, Lyndi, is the sole shareholder had issued a statutory demand that Mr Bayni repay the money.

Mr Bayni was one of the six people on Adler's telephone list when he was jailed in April last year. "You are on my telephone list for several reasons + friendship and mutual investment interest," Adler wrote in one of his letters.

In another, Adler said: "I must rely on you to do things that I ask, in the time that I ask. You also must be very careful to keep everything confidential … There is always a reason I ask for something to be done. Please respect my wishes and requests."

He lives in a multi-million dollar mansion in Sydney, while the people who he stole from remain in financial ruin.

Release From Prison

On 13 October 2007 at 8.30am, Adler was released from the St Heliers Correctional Centre in the Upper Hunter Valley on parole, after spending two and a half years of his sentence. However, in November 20007, he will face court in a NSW civil case related to bonuses he recommended for executives of the failed telco OneTel. Adler was on OneTel's remuneration committee..