One-time Australian hero Alan Bond was jailed for a further three years yesterday for his part in the country's biggest corporate fraud. An appeals court in Western Australia, where Bond devised many of his international deals, said an earlier sentence handed down in February of four years was too lenient and failed to reflect the severity of his crimes.
Bond, who could have applied for parole in 1998, now has an earliest possible release date of June 1999.
Bond (59), is serving a concurrent sentence of three years for an earlier fraud involving the French impressionist painting La Promenade.
He was first jailed in 1992 for two-and-a-half years after being found guilty of inducing a friend to contribute to the rescue of a bank in Western Australia while concealing an £82 million fee for his own company.
Bond, whose personal fortune was estimated at about £170 million in the late 1980s before the collapse of his Bond Corp Holdings Ltd under a pile of debt, is due back in court in October to fight an investigation into whether he concealed assets from creditors while bankrupt.
