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Kerry Stokes walks away from SAS defence charity
The mogul departed from an SAS charity he co-founded, praised for his support that had been in “private and without fuss”.
Mark Di StefanoColumnistIt’s been a bit over 24 hours since we learnt Kerry Stokes had elected to keep his dirty laundry private.
Stokes’ lawyers told a court the sandgroper mogul would cover the legal bills for disgraced war criminal and former Seven employee Ben Roberts-Smith.
By covering the spiralling costs of the former SAS commando’s failed case against Nine (the publisher of this masthead), Stokes also ensured a cache of more than 8600 emails between himself, lawyers and consigliere Bruce McWilliam remained shielded from view.
Seven West chairman Kerry Stokes. Trevor Collens
Whatever was in those emails was spicy enough to be worth paying for. Think – Nine’s costs tallied up to some $16 million. Some rough maths, Stokes paid almost $1900 per email.
McWilliam can breathe a sigh of relief. He remains known in media circles for his punchy character assessments delivered late at night. And that’s just what he sends members of the press.
Can you imagine what he sends to Stokes? Was there something in there that could cause more than just embarrassment?
It’s a shame – for us anyway – that those emails are to be disappeared, sealed in an external hard drive, thrown into the abyss.
We’re now in the epilogue of the defence of BRS by one of this country’s most celebrated businessman. Exactly why Stokes stuck by Roberts-Smith for so long can be put down to some version of factors that stretched out on a spectrum. Stokes’ infatuation with the military sits there somewhere.
This is why we were surprised to learn the billionaire had recently left the board of a military charity he co-founded.
The SAS Resources Fund was set up in the 1990s to give “relief and support” to current and former commandos in the elite unit. According to its website, the charity provides financial assistance for SAS commandos and families who experience hardship.
Stokes was there from the beginning. His sometimes-frenemy Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest joined the fund’s board in 2012, and continues as a member. Another is James McMahon, who served as an SAS commando before being recruited by Stokes to join his private investment office Australian Capital Equity. McMahon left ACE earlier this year.
Last week, SAS Resources released its annual newsletter, revealing Stokes was leaving as a trustee of the charity.
The chairman of the SAS Resources Fund, Grant Walsh, paid a special tribute to Stokes. “Every tragic loss of an SAS soldier would result in his personal approach to ascertain what additional support may be needed,” he wrote. “His generosity always followed.
“Everything Mr Stokes has done for the SAS community has been in private
and without fuss.”
Well, not everything.
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