Vic: Pratt took great comfort in court dropping charges - lawyer

AAP General News (Australia)
04-28-2009
Vic: Pratt took great comfort in court dropping charges - lawyer

MELBOURNE, April 28 AAP - Dying billionaire Richard Pratt took great comfort from learning
the criminal case against him had been dropped, his lawyer Leon Zwier said on Tuesday.

In the Federal Court on Monday the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP)
withdrew all charges against Mr Pratt on the grounds of his advance terminal cancer.

"His family conveyed to him the outcome of the court case and it gave him comfort at
this particular time," Mr Zwier told ABC Radio.

Mr Zwier said Mr Pratt told him that the case should never have been brought to court.

"He maintained it should never have been brought and maintained that he should be shown
to be innocent and he has," Mr Zwier said.

Mr Zwier said Mr Pratt, 74, the head of the $5 billion Visy Packaging global empire,
is "ailing, very sick and frail".

"I have no doubt he is extremely grateful for the compassion and the kindness that
Justice Ryan delivered this ruling during his lifetime," Mr Zwier said.

He said that the CDPP and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)
dropped the charges on the grounds of ill-health but at this stage of Mr Pratt's life,
that was irrelevant.

"He has maintained from the beginning that he is innocent and is presumed to be innocent
and that's all that matters," Mr Zwier said.

"Richard Pratt never wanted, doesn't want and would not have wanted prosecution to
be terminated because of ill-health.

"Mr Pratt will die an innocent man."

It is alleged Mr Pratt misled the ACCC at a hearing in 2005 when he denied a 2001 conversation
he allegedly had about price fixing with then Amcor chief executive Russell Jones.

AAP jxt/gfr/jpm

KEYWORD: PRATT LAWYER

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