The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald have removed an article that suggested multimillionaire Geoff Bainbridge was the victim of an elaborate six-year extortion racket, admitting they appeared to have been “badly misled” after doubts were raised about aspects of the story.
The Age’s chief reporter, Chip Le Grand, wrote on Monday evening that revelations about a video depicting Bainbridge using drugs had thrown into doubt the version of events Bainbridge gave him last week about the footage being at the centre of an extortion attempt.
The original Nine story was an apparent effort by Bainbridge to counter a highly damaging story in the Australian newspaper.
The Australian reported the chief executive of Lark Distillery had allegedly smoked ice in an explicit video filmed in 2021. Bainbridge, a co-founder of the burger chain Grill’d, resigned as Lark CEO when the story broke.
EXCLUSIVE | The ice pipe video that Geoff Bainbridge claims was taken six years ago as part of an extortion racket was actually filmed in the bedroom of his $3.5m Melbourne home in the past 18 months https://t.co/xXJbQJYENl
— The Australian (@australian) February 20, 2022
Guardian Australia reported on Friday that the two newspapers had wildly differing versions of Bainbridge’s story but Nine was satisfied Bainbridge was telling the truth because he had provided them with multiple documents to back up his story of extortion.
In the Nine story, Bainbridge claimed he was a victim of crime and had been set up by a woman he met in a bar in Asia six years ago. He claimed he was targeted by a criminal gang who extorted thousands of dollars out of him to keep quiet, but when he refused to pay any more they sent the video to journalists at News Corp Australia.
Nine’s version was called into question when the Sunday Herald Sun revealed the video appeared to have been shot in Bainbridge’s own Melbourne home, which he bought in 2020, contradicting his claim in the Age and SMH that it was filmed on a wild night out in Singapore in 2015.
“The former chief executive of Lark Distilling, who resigned from the publicly listed company hours before the video was broadcast, appears to have misled the Age and Herald about where and when it was taken,” Le Grand wrote in the Nine newspapers on Monday evening.
Nine said its original reporting relied on documents supplied by Bainbridge who was working with a Melbourne PR adviser and a lawyer. They provided records of financial transactions made in Philippine pesos to two separate bank accounts, purported extortion demands sent this year by text message from a Malaysian WhatsApp account and “a confidential report by Control Risks, a global risk consultancy, which analysed the purported extortion attempt and advised him how to respond”.
“If Mr Bainbridge confected parts of the story to the Age and Herald, it means he could have misrepresented the financial reports and text messages provided to his lawyer, a crisis management expert and the authors of the Control Risks report,” Le Grand wrote on Monday evening.
The Age’s editor, Gay Alcorn, told Guardian Australia: “We believe we were badly misled and we question the veracity of the documents we received. We have retracted the story and written a follow-up that makes it clear that we believe we were misled. We will be putting a correction note in the newspaper tomorrow [Wednesday].”
The Australian’s investigations writer, Sharri Markson, reported on Monday that the bedroom the videos were filmed in has the same features as the one in the house Bainbridge has lived in for 18 months.
“Online real estate photographs show the master bedroom, positioned at the front of the home, features a unique light-fitting, ornate ceiling decor, period shutters, a study nook in the corner of the bedroom, a fireplace and a distinctive bedhead,” she wrote.
“All of these details can be seen very clearly in three full, unpublished videos recorded by Mr Bainbridge that were obtained by the Australian.”
Markson said the information suggested his story was a “fabrication” as “he obviously recorded the drug-taking video in the inner-Melbourne house he bought in late 2020”.
Comment was sought from Bainbridge.
Bainbridge told Nine he wasn’t an ice user and didn’t know how he came to have the drug. He also told the Age and SMH in their original story that “although I consider myself a victim of a crime, I accept that I am also responsible for the circumstances I find myself in”.
“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,” he told the newspapers.
