Court to hand down judgment on One.Tel

One.Tel founder Jodee Rich is expected to learn on Wednesday whether the corporate
watchdog has won its case against him over the junior telco's 2001 collapse.
NSW Supreme Court judge Robert Austin is set to hand down judgment in the Australian
Securities and Investments Commission's (ASIC) civil case against Mr Rich and former
One.Tel director Mark Silbermann over the collapse.
ASIC launched legal action in December 2001 seeking to ban both Mr Rich and Mr
Silbermann from being directors and managers of companies.
ASIC claimed the pair misled the One.Tel board of directors, which included James
Packer and Lachlan Murdoch, over the financial state of the company.
But Mr Rich and Mr Silbermann have denied the claims and argued One.Tel would have
survived if the board had not decided to abandon a $132 million rights issue.
Mr Packer introduced his late father's former company Publishing and Broadcasting
Ltd (PBL), and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, to the One.Tel business, and together the
media companies lost about $1 billion when the telco folded.
Ferrier Hodgson was appointed as administrators on May 29, 2001.
At the time, Mr Packer and Lachlan Murdoch issued a statement saying they had been
profoundly misled about the telco's financial state.