Crikey understands that
Steve Vizard’s wife Sarah got on the phone to the ABC Sydney
switchboard last night to complain, after the appearance of her
husband’s former bookkeeper, Roy Hilliard, who finally got to fill out
his version of the incredible tale of the missing Vizard millions on
the 7.30 Report.

It
was Hilliard’s second chance to dig the dirt on his former boss and,
much like his first, it packed a punch. In 2003 he fronted a committal
hearing over allegations he’d stolen $3 million from Vizard and told
the court his former boss was guilty of improper share trades, a claim
that eventually led to Vizard being fined $390,000 and banned from
directing a company for ten years.

Last night Hilliard made new
allegations that Vizard had used a network of trusts to avoid paying
company tax for six years and said Vizard and his wife Sarah drew a
salary of just $35,000 each from the companies to minimise the personal
tax they paid. Speaking from his rented apartment in Castlemaine,
Hilliard also told the 7.30 Report‘s Emma Alberici that the Vizard group of companies had paid no tax from 1994 to 2000:

ROY HILLIARD: It was our
policy to minimise tax through distributions of funds, income to the
Vizard foundation.

EMMA ALBERICI: The charitable foundation?

ROY HILLIARD: The charitable foundation.

EMMA ALBERICI: So how much tax was paid?

ROY
HILLIARD: None, none, none. From um, from the year, tax year commencing
1st July, 1994 to the tax year ending 30th June 2000 the Vizard group
paid no tax.

Hilliard also denied Vizard’s allegation
that he had siphoned $3 million out of Vizard’s Westpac accounts and
then resigned from his job out of guilt over the act:

“All of the transactions that I was accused of doing was
with his consent and for his benefit and of course mine as well,” said
Hilliard. “I suggested that I could channel anonymous funds back into
him through my travel business. He thought that was a good idea. So we
tried it and went on from there… The purpose, as I understood it, was
for Mr Vizard to have a secret cache or fund that nobody except he knew
about, where it was or what it was for.”

Hilliard –
who’s 56, broke and still being investigated by the Westpac Bank –
rejected a number of lucrative offers from the commercial networks to
speak to the ABC for free. His solicitor, Magda Kron, said Hilliard –
who last week was convicted of 14 charges of false accounting and then
sledged in the Saturday Age
for his “lavish lifestyle” – had just wanted to be left alone but
decided to do the interview because his five year silence “was choking
him” and the ABC offer seemed the most respectable choice.

Vizard’s lawyers, Arnold Bloch Leibler emailed the 7:30 Report yesterday
denying the claims and arguing that Vizard “never gave instructions” to
Hilliard to act as he’s alleged and that Vizard “never manipulated his
bookkeeper.” Vizard’s legal team also said the Vizard Group declared
substantial income and paid its taxes and that Steve Vizard never
established a secret cache or fund.

Could Hilliard’s revelations see him sued? Well, the 7.30 Report’s
legal team obviously thought not, because they ran the show. As for
Hilliard: “Roy has been advised of the risks,” said Kron when we spoke
to her this morning, “and (he) felt that he was on safe ground.” She
said “trial by media is not the appropriate forum” but Hilliard
“obviously felt enough had been said about him” and decided it was time
to return fire.

And he certainly went some way to balance the
ledger. When asked by Alberici how he would describe Vizard now,
Hilliard replied: “I’d have to go to scripture I think. ‘He’s a whited
sepulchre, full of dead man’s bones and rottenness.'”