Alex Alexander living high life in Sydney despite owing millions...

Alex Alexander living high life in Sydney despite owing millions after closing yellow diamond mine

• SPECIAL REPORT Matthew Benns
• The Daily Telegraph
• August 17, 20156:47AM

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Alex Alexander with his wife Iris Xie. Source: Supplied
A POKER-playing Russian oligarch is living the high life in Sydney despite his company closing down a rare yellow diamond mine without warning, leaving Australian workers and creditors owed millions.

Alex Alexander’s Kimberley Diamond Company closed the Ellendale diamond mine in Western Australia at short notice on the last day of the financial year, owing creditors more than $13.4 million.
Coogee fly-in, fly-out miner Rob Gault was one of the 100 miners driven out of the facility just before payday and says he is still owed $45,000 in unpaid wages and allowances.
“They were running it on a shoestring,” he said. “We were all worried about it but never thought they would do something like they did.”
While Mr Gault worries about paying his bills, Mr Alexander’s other companies have pumped $10 million into another rare yellow diamond mine in Botswana and are looking to start afresh there despite a trail of destruction being left in Australia.

Before it went bust, the oligarch’s Kimberley Diamonds Company received $12 million in environmental bonds set aside to regenerate the Australian mine site when it closed. Fixing the site is estimated at $30 million and the bill may now have to be picked up by taxpayers.
A spokesman for West Australian Mining Minister Bill Marmion said the company owed $403,000 in mine rehabilitation levies and about $1.5 million in royalties.
In the swish offices of Kimberley Diamonds — on the 39th floor of the Australia Square tower in Sydney’s CBD — it is business as usual for 46-year-old Mr Alexander.

BRAVERY BOASTS

The big Russian, who made his first fortune selling Greek lemons in the middle of Moscow winters, would not come to the marble front desk to speak to The Daily Telegraph.
Just a year ago he was interviewed in his office with its harbour views and boasted it was bravery that had secured him the diamond deal.
“Like Jeremy Irons says in (the film) Margin Call, it wasn’t brains that got me here, I can assure you!” he told The Australian.
Now his failed company owes more than $13.4 million but the man who once had a business partnership with former premier Neville Wran has not let it affect his lifestyle.

He collects fine red wine as a hobby and is listed as living with his glamorous Chinese stockbroker wife Iris Xie in a $12 million, multi-level waterfront home in Mosman on Sydney’s north shore. Facebook photos show them holidaying in Greece and swilling champagne by the harbour.
TIFFANY & CO DEAL

Before it closed, the Ellendale mine produced half the world’s rare yellow diamonds and had a lifetime deal to supply Tiffany & Co. The New York jeweller refused price hikes and the deal ended. The last batch of yellow diamonds that went to auction on the open market fetched less than half their former price. Tiffany & Co spokesman Nathan Strauss confirmed the deal was over.
“While we hope for a favourable wind-down of the mine for the benefit of the workers and surrounding community, Tiffany & Co. maintains a strong inventory of yellow rough and polished diamonds.”

Administrator Sule Arnautovic, from Jirsch Sutherland, told creditors at a Perth meeting last week that he had requested ASIC investigate Kimberley Diamonds and allegations of “skulduggery and proceeds going missing”.
The creditors rejected an offer from Mr Alexander and his board to repay them at a rate of $1.5 million a year in exchange for them getting first dibs on $1.8 million of assets including a pile of yellow diamonds being held in Antwerp.
The mine is under armed guard and the workers wonder when Mr Alexander’s company is going to pay them.