- Posts
- 5,578
- Likes
- 6,342
CanberraOmega
·http://www.theguardian.com/australi...designer-watches-assuming-they-were-were-fake
Tony Abbott and other Liberals took Rolexes they thought were fake
Tony Abbott, Stuart Robert and Ian Macfarlane were given $250,000 worth of watches out of a plastic bag by Chinese instant noodle billionaire Li Ruipeng
A group of Liberal party MPs, including the former prime minister and then federal opposition leader Tony Abbott, are under scrutiny over $250,000 worth of designer watches they were given by a visiting billionaire from China almost three years ago – that were assumed to be fakes.
Among them is the embattled MP Stuart Robert, who was then the opposition’s defence, science, technology and personnel spokesman, and is now under intense political pressure over a controversial trip to China in 2014.
“Instant noodle billionaire” Li Ruipeng, the chair of the Li Guancheng Investment Management Group, gave Abbott, Robert and the then opposition industry spokesman, Ian Macfarlane, designer watches out of a plastic bag at an informal dinner at Parliament House in June 2013 as a goodwill gesture.
Macfarlane, assuming his Rolex was a fake worth between $300 and $500, declared the gift with the clerk of the House of Representatives but kept it (“and wore it occasionally,” says the Herald Sun).
Macfarlane had the watch valued in Sydney after the September federal election, after the then Liberal candidate for Moore, Ian Goodenough, favourably compared it to his own, genuine Rolex.
Macfarlane was told his watch was worth about $40,000 – and his had obviously not been as expensive as those given to Abbott and Margie Abbott.
Tony Abbott and other Liberals took Rolexes they thought were fake
Tony Abbott, Stuart Robert and Ian Macfarlane were given $250,000 worth of watches out of a plastic bag by Chinese instant noodle billionaire Li Ruipeng
A group of Liberal party MPs, including the former prime minister and then federal opposition leader Tony Abbott, are under scrutiny over $250,000 worth of designer watches they were given by a visiting billionaire from China almost three years ago – that were assumed to be fakes.
Among them is the embattled MP Stuart Robert, who was then the opposition’s defence, science, technology and personnel spokesman, and is now under intense political pressure over a controversial trip to China in 2014.
“Instant noodle billionaire” Li Ruipeng, the chair of the Li Guancheng Investment Management Group, gave Abbott, Robert and the then opposition industry spokesman, Ian Macfarlane, designer watches out of a plastic bag at an informal dinner at Parliament House in June 2013 as a goodwill gesture.
Macfarlane, assuming his Rolex was a fake worth between $300 and $500, declared the gift with the clerk of the House of Representatives but kept it (“and wore it occasionally,” says the Herald Sun).
Macfarlane had the watch valued in Sydney after the September federal election, after the then Liberal candidate for Moore, Ian Goodenough, favourably compared it to his own, genuine Rolex.
Macfarlane was told his watch was worth about $40,000 – and his had obviously not been as expensive as those given to Abbott and Margie Abbott.
