Melbourne entrepreneur Geoff Bainbridge, a co-founder of Grill’d, says he was the victim of a “sophisticated, continuing and recently escalated extortion” prior to the release of footage showing him intoxicated while purportedly smoking methamphetamine.
Bainbridge resigned on Wednesday as chief executive of Lark Distillery, an ASX-listed alcohol company, after the footage was published in the Australian.
“Although I consider myself a victim of a crime, I accept that I am also responsible for the circumstances I find myself in,” he said in a statement.
“Ultimately, I put myself in a situation I shouldn’t have been in. I’m a victim of extortion but that wouldn’t have occurred without my poor judgment. I am deeply remorseful for my own actions.″
The Age and Sydney Morning Herald reported Bainbridge had received anonymous threats as recently as Tuesday that the footage – which he says was filmed in 2015 – would be released unless he chose to “negotiate”.
In a statement, Bainbridge said the incident had taken place prior to his appointment as Lark chief executive while he was travelling abroad. He said he attended a “gathering” with people he didn’t know and can’t remember much about the night.
The next morning, he said, it became clear he had been “set up as part of a shakedown”. He said the video was then used as part of a “sophisticated, continuing and recently escalated extortion”.
He said he paid the extortionists and sought advice from a London-based threat assessment agency. He then stopped replying to the threats, something he said prompted the extortionists to release the footage to “several media outlets”.
Bainbridge told the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald that he wasn’t an ice user and doesn’t know how he came to have the drug or what else he was given.
News Corp Australia published the footage on Wednesday morning which appears to show Bainbridge smoking an unverified substance, purportedly methamphetamine, from a glass pipe while making sexually explicit comments.
The board of Lark Distilling, which is worth $340m, met on Tuesday for an emergency board meeting about Bainbridge, who has been the company’s chief executive and managing director since mid-2020.
On Wednesday, Lark announced that Bainbridge had resigned “effective immediately to enable him to manage a personal matter that was brought to the attention of the board on the afternoon of 15 February 2022”.
Bainbridge, 50, helped to found the successful burger chain Grill’d, but recently ended his association with the company.
In a statement to News Corp, Bainbridge’s lawyers said: “The attempted extortion of Mr Bainbridge commenced years before he had any involvement in Lark Distillery; and Mr Bainbridge has sought the assistance of London-based professionals with the extortion attempt.”
Bainbridge has said the extortion attempt began in December 2015 while he was in south-east Asia.
