The current controversy surrounding the recently released Paradise Papers — a multinational investigation into more than 13 million leaked documents revealing a mind-boggling number of offshore financial deals involving several high-profile figures — has embroiled late, great Australian musician Michael Hutchence.
According to The Guardian and Four Corners — two of the more than 90 media partners who have joined the International Consortium Of Investigative Journalists in deconstructing the leak — Hutchence's business manager, Colin Diamond, is apparently the "ultimate beneficial owner" of the singer's estate and his body of work, having helped him set up an offshore company, Chardonnay Investments, through which Hutchence's music rights were held.
Following his death in 1997, Diamond became the sole owner of the company, as well as being co-executor of Hutchence's will.
"In the settlement with the estate of Michael Hutchence it was agreed that all intellectual property rights belonged to Chardonnay Investments Ltd which is controlled by Colin Diamond and by virtue of him being the ultimate beneficial owner, he controls the assets of Chardonnay," a lawyer for Diamond, Michael Lim, wrote in an email to law firm Appleby, the company from which the Paradise Papers were initially leaked.
According to Hutchence's will, the singer's wishes were that his now-21-year-old daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, should receive 50 per cent of his estate, with 10 per cent apiece being disseminated to his partner, Paula Yates, his father, Kelland Hutchence, his mother, Patricia Glassop, his sister, Tina, and his brother, Rhett.
However, Lim's email reportedly asserts that due to Hutchence's "various family issues", he had deliberately transferred all the rights to his music to Chardonnay, in the years before his death. The INXS portion of that IP was later split up between labels and publishers following a deal with Diamond.
Particularly of note is the fact that, in 2015, Diamond teamed up with Australian entrepreneur Ron Creevey to form a new company, Helipad Plain, the Paradise Papers apparently showing it was set up with the aim of enacting "commercial exploitation of the sound recordings, images, films and related materials embodying the performance of Michael Hutchence".
Some of the material held by Chardonnay later appeared in Channel Seven's recent documentary about the singer, Michael Hutchence: The Last Rockstar, with Diamond himself appearing in the two-part program after having been introduced, by Creevey, to executive producer Mark Llewellyn.
Creevey has since said that he and his company, Moment Media, are no longer involved with Helipad Plain, while Llewellyn asserts that neither Creevey nor Diamond were paid by Seven, saying the latter "provided his interview and access to the unique archive in his possession for no money".
Read more about Michael Hutchence's estate and the Paradise Paper at The Guardian and Four Corners.
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