skase

08 Aug 2001

How Pixie unwittingly revealed island hideaway.

Eric Ellis, dispatched from London to Majorca in 1991, remembers the thrill of the Skase chase

THE best and worst asset Christopher Charles Skase acquired was his wife. Pixie Frew was the one who led the media and investigators to their Majorcan hideaway in 1991. Then she kept him out of reach for the decade that followed. To the end.
In April 1991, it was rumoured Skase was building a Mirage-style resort on Majorca. It became clear after asking around local yacht clubs and property agents that perma-tanned foreigners called Christopher - most of them retired English sailors - were thicker on the ground than big-haired Aussie blondes called Pixie.
So I started asking after her instead, which led me 24 hours later to the balcony of a Hong Kong Chinese woman called Aurora to whom a neighbourly Pixie had introduced herself two days earlier.
Binoculars, borrowed from Aurora, trained that sunny Saturday morning on Casa Skase just 50m away, showed Senor Skase scratching his paunch while contemplating the first dip of the day.
His hideaway in Port d'Andratx was revealed.
My visits in April, September and October threw up some amusing and revealing moments which still resonate a decade later.
There was Michel, the gay Majorcan hairdresser-photographer with a salon in Port d'Andratx, who got richer as the Skase chase intensifed. I'd commissioned him to take a few shots in April and he'd ridden to to the Skase compound on a battered Vespa.
By September, the subsequent publicity had spawned a cottage industry. Michel had spurned his hairdressing clients to run tourists, mostly Australians, on the back of a newer Vespa to the Skase compound.
There was the corpulent Mike, the only other Australian in the town. He was a Melbourne stockbroker who'd done his shirt in the 1987 crash and escaped to Majorca, where he was re-building his fortune selling time-shares.
Mike was something of a double agent. He'd tip me off to Skase's movements, then call Skase to tell him I was on my way with Michel.
There was the urbane Georgian nobleman who called himself Prince Zourab Tchokutoa. It was said by a few locals that he had powerful connections to the Spanish royal family. It was said by many more that he had closer ties to the Majorcan mafia. Skase partnered him in local property deals.
And then there was my spooky encounter with the Skases themselves, and Pixie's son-in-law Tony Larkins.
On the second visit, we'd got pictures of Skase up a ladder doing handiwork on the property - this when he said he couldn't return to Australia because of a bad back.
He also said he had emphysema - but here he was with the Skase clan at a local restaurant, smoking Cuban cigars and enjoying several bottles of good Spanish rioja.
I approached him, mid-draw, for an interview. He asked where I was staying. I asked why that mattered. He said he wouldn't be interviewed unless I told him my hotel and room number. I refused.
Larkins insisted that I tell him my room number, and what car I was driving. Pixie then chimed in, her shrill voice betraying her Toorak couture: "Awww, what are ya? I reckon yer a paranoid schizophrenic. Leave us in peace."
Once his whereabouts had been revealed, the Skase connections went into overdrive. His former colleague, Sydney business journalist Trevor Sykes, wrote friendly articles in Australian Business magazine that described the modest house (it wasn't), his straitened financial conditions (they weren't) and quoting Skase claiming I had vandalised Skase's property (I didn't).
Also revealing, a good contact at the Australian embassy in Madrid maintains that all through 1991-93, the embassy never received one call from officials in Australia seeking their help.