Tirath Hassaram Khemlani — biographical timeline

Last updated 30 September 2026. Fifth pass: independent review of the handoff, corrections to source attribution and evidential claims, removal of private property identifiers from the public draft, and additional contemporary reporting and parliamentary sources. The review separates verified records, attributed reports, unresolved contradictions and research leads. Earlier verification passes were completed on 10 July, 11 July and 30 September 2026. Later on 30 September, Richard Bean approved publishing the Pittsburgh street address in the people-search lead (it is already findable through Google), and then the name of the family who owned it and the Wooldridge candidate research, and a re-reading of the Sydney Morning Herald* of 17 October 1975 added the Bangor and prisoner-of-war details below. Research compiled by Richard Bean with AI research assistance. Sources include:*

• User-supplied research files (Khemlani.eml and its many .eml attachments; PAC-10194523-khemlani-link-with-nugan-hand.pdf = Marian Wilkinson, The National Times, 15–21 Nov 1985, pp. 20 & 22; IMG_8302/8302-2/8303/8304/8306.heic = pp. 70–75 of Brian Toohey & Marian Wilkinson, The Book of Leaks: Exposes in Defence of the Public’s Right to Know (Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1987), ISBN 9780207155086).
• Wayne Reynolds’s entry on Khemlani in the Australian Dictionary of Biography / Obituaries Australia.
• Denis Freney, Get Gough! How the CIA & Rupert Murdoch overthrew Gough Whitlam (Tribune special, October 1985), Ch. 2 “The Khemlani Affair”, pp. 5–11 — the densest single secondary account, with much of the FBI / Mafia / Haiti / Macwell / Hong-Kong-1983 detail. Full text on archive.org.
• Jonathan Kwitny, “The Great Dingo Hunt”, Mother Jones Feb–Mar 1984, p.67 (the article expanded into the Australian chapters of The Crimes of Patriots, Norton 1987); and Kwitny, “The CIA’s Hidden Hand in Down Under”, Foreign Policy No. 49 (Winter 1982–83) p.199.
• Gough Whitlam, The Truth of the Matter (Penguin 1979) p.222, and 1983 reprint p.230.
• Michael Sexton, Illusions of Power: The Fate of a Reform Government (Allen & Unwin, 1979). Citation unresolved: an earlier draft of this file repeatedly cited p.334, but the library catalogue records 305 pages. A different source or edition must be identified before using that locator.
• Paul Kelly, The Dismissal (Angus & Robertson 1983) p.374 — reissue of The Unmaking of Gough (1976).
• Bruce Page, The Murdoch Archipelago (2003).
• John Pilger, A Secret Country (Knopf 1989/1990).
• Tom Uren, Straight Left (1995), pp. 236–7.
• George Megalogenis, The Australian Moment: How We Were Made for These Times (2012). An earlier draft of this file attributed this book to Shaun Carney. The publisher identifies Megalogenis; the previously cited p.67 has not been checked.
• Gavin Souter, Acts of Parliament: A Narrative History of the Senate and House of Representatives, Commonwealth of Australia (Melbourne University Press, 1988), p.714 — Wheeler/Whitlam dialogue. (An earlier draft of this file misattributed the book to Lionel Bowen; Souter is the author.)
• Coxsedge, Coldicutt & Harant, Rooted in Secrecy: The Clandestine Element in Australian Politics (Committee for the Abolition of Political Police, 1982), pp. 40 & 237 & 262.
• Harry Gordon, An Eyewitness History of Australia (Penguin 1988) p.510, reprinting Peter Game’s Melbourne Herald dispatch.
• Laurie Oakes, Crash Through or Crash (1976) p.135.
• Geoffrey Bolton, Oxford History of Australia, Vol. 5, p.374.
• Coral Bell, Dependent Ally (the “K1/K2/K3” Treasury naming convention) p.250.
• The Australian Dictionary of Biography (Wayne Reynolds, online 2016, print 2021); separately, the Canberra Times obituary of 13 September 1991 reproduced on Obituaries Australia.
• The Trove digitised newspaper corpus (National Library of Australia) — usable URLs noted; the trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/<id> form was accessed directly. The September 2026 pass searched Trove for every “Khemlani” and “Hassaram” article dated 1976–1999 (about 170 hits) and read the ones that add facts.
• US people-search data (research lead only): commercial sites that resell US credit-bureau “header” records (the name, address and birth month collected when someone applies for credit or a utility) list “Tirathdas Hassaram, born September 1920” at 2045 Murdstone Road, Upper St. Clair, Pittsburgh. Undated aggregator entries are not biographical evidence. The address, which is already findable through Google, and the name of the family who owned the house are published with Richard Bean’s approval. The historical question is whether a contemporary court record identifies a Pittsburgh bail surety.
• Historic Hansard (search.historichansard.net) — 282 fragment hits for “Khemlani” 1975–80, distilled below.
• The National Archives of Australia (NAA) Fact Sheet 239, which itemises NAA file series A1209, A8446, A432, A571, A1573 (Commonwealth records) and M3865, M1567, M4081 (Clyde Cameron’s, Cairns’s and Harders’s personal papers) on the Loans Affair.
• WikiLeaks PlusD: ≈20 declassified US State Dept cables on Khemlani / the Loans Affair / the Iraqi Breakfast affair / ONACORA (1975–1979); listed below.
• The London/Edinburgh Gazette (open-access full PDF), TNA HO 334/871/35287 (naturalisation), UK Companies House (K B (Import & Export) Limited 01490164), the New Straits Times (Singapore) Google News Archive for the 24 May 1974 Thomas Simson & Co notice.
• Modern reconstructions of the adjacent Iraqi Breakfast affair — Suzanne Rutland (AJHS Journal 22(2), 2015), Philip Dorling (Fairfax 2012, Narooma News reprint), Troy Bramston (Quadrant March 2016 and April 2024), Rodney Tiffen (“Rupert Murdoch’s greatest scoop”, Pearls and Irritations, 12 Sept 2025; republished as “Best of 2025”, 7 Jan 2026 — an earlier draft of this file wrongly bylined this piece “Bowman & Stine”).

This file is intended as raw material for a future, properly footnoted Wikipedia article (the handoff records a redirect from Tirath Khemlani to Loans affair; the Wikipedia-history section below records an earlier standalone article). The user’s nine talk-page questions are answered explicitly in the second half.

Note on names. The documentary search must include Khemlani, Hassaram and Tirathdas Hassaram. These variants are recorded in the naturalisation, bankruptcy and prosecution material cited below. An earlier draft of this file inferred precise kinship and naming conventions from shared names, and treated those conventions as the explanation for failed official checks. Those inferences are not established by the records. What the records do show: the ADB names his father as Hassaram Ganggaram, so “Hassaram”, the surname in his British naturalisation (1961), Scottish company and English bankruptcy records (1964–71), is his father’s given name.

Evidence status. This is a working research timeline, not a verified biography. A catalogue or clipping title proves that an item is indexed, not that its contents support a claim. Later accounts repeating Toohey do not count as independent confirmation of his reporting. Court allegations, parliamentary allegations and newspaper allegations are attributed as such. The fifth-pass review did not reread every earlier source, cable or Hansard entry; unresolved items are listed in the accompanying review report.

Names and aliases (assembled answer to question 8)

Separate person, reported co-defendant (kinship unverified): Gobind Hassamal Dalamal, of Prince’s Gate, London SW7, abandoned the surname Ramnani by a deed poll enrolled on 20 April 1970 (London Gazette 5 May 1970, p.5098; an earlier draft of this file gave 8 May). Gobind Dalamal was 2nd defendant alongside Khemlani in the February 1976 London Chancery writ. Later Gazette notices close the Dalamal story: on 3 June 1987 Minories Finance Ltd, the renamed Johnson Matthey Bankers (the bank whose 1974 reference had vouched for the “Dalamal group”), petitioned to wind up Dalamal & Sons (London) Ltd of 156 New Cavendish Street (London Gazette 30 June 1987, p.8373; the renaming is stated in 16 May 1988, p.5772); and Gobind Hassamal Dalamal, “lately a Company Director”, was made bankrupt on a creditor’s petition on 18 October 1993 (4 November 1993, p.17737), discharged 18 October 1996 (15 January 1997, p.581). The earlier search reported no Gazette notice for Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) Ltd, the company Khemlani managed.

Manchester identity caution. The officers of K B (Import & Export) Limited, company 01490164, must not be merged with Tirath Hassaram Khemlani on name similarity alone. An earlier draft of this file described Tirthdas Khemchand Khemlani as a likely maternal cousin and expanded “K B” as “Khemlani Brothers”. Neither inference is supported by the cited company record. Nor does the signature “T. Khemlani” on the 1982 K B & Co (Manchester) notice, by itself, identify Tirath.

Namesakes to avoid (search traps). These turn up in searches but are not Tirath Hassaram Khemlani: - Kiratrai Adhermai Khemlani, a Singapore businessman acquitted in January 1981 of bribing jockeys, including the Australian Ron Hutchinson (Canberra Times, 18 January 1981, p.26). Singapore and Australian searches for 1981 are dominated by this case. - R v Khemlani (1981) 3 Cr App R (S) 208, an English sentencing appeal about a young cash-and-carry trader and stolen watches. - A Khemlani in Portland, Oregon, 1979–83, apparently a criminal defendant: most US press hits with “indicted”, “bail” and “FBI” in this period are about him (none mention Whitlam, Pakistan or Hassaram). One exception worth reading is the Jersey Journal (New Jersey) of 30 April 1980, p.2, which names a Khemlani during Tirath’s bail period; it also mentions Portland, so it is probably the Oregon case. - “Ross/Rose Khemlani” (a Maui condominium case, 1983), Neeraj Khemlani (a US student editor, 1991), and Khemchand Utamchand Khemlani (born Hyderabad 1900, naturalised British 1966, TNA HO 334/1131/71609), whose relationship to Tirath is unknown. - Gazette companies “K. Hassaram & Co. (Europe) Ltd” (struck off 1960–61) and “R. Hassaram (U.K.) Ltd” (1984): no known link.

Chronological timeline

Origins and pre-Loans-affair career (1920 – Nov 1974)

• 12 September 1920: Birthdate on UK naturalisation certificate R1/35287. 17 September 1920 — Birthdate given by the ADB. Both sources agree on the year. Place: Sindh, British India (now Pakistan); some 1975 Embassy traffic erroneously says “born in Singapore” (cable 1975CANBER04389). Father Hassaram Ganggaram, textile manufacturer; mother Hemibai née Khemchand (ADB).
• c. 1940s: Arranged first marriage to Somar; daughter Shanti and two sons born (ADB).
• 1942–1945 (Japanese occupation of Singapore): By his own account in 1975, Khemlani spent the war years in Singapore, where he “started his working life as a clerk-accountant”, and he spoke Japanese; he said that at the war’s end a suggestion that he had dealt with Allied prisoners for the Japanese was raised and that the returning British cleared him (Michael Richardson, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October 1975, p.3; see the 16 October 1975 entry). This is his unverified self-description; the ADB says nothing about the war years, moving from his birth and first marriage to his arrival in Britain in 1950. A test would be the British Military Administration’s 1945–46 screening of collaborators in Singapore (UK National Archives, War Office series) or Singapore’s own archives. Online checks on 1 October 2026 found no 1940s record of him under Khemlani, Hassaram or Tirathdas in the UK National Archives catalogue (which also indexes the India Office passport and Gulf files) or in the National Archives of Australia. The British Military Administration’s screening files are not indexed by name online, so they would have to be read at Kew or in Singapore. NewspaperSG (Singapore newspapers, including the occupation-era Syonan Shimbun and the 1945–47 Straits Times), the National Archives of Singapore and the National Archives of India’s Abhilekh Patal portal could not be searched from here because of bot checks; all three are free to search in an ordinary browser. (A 1940 India Office file on a “Tirath Das”, agent of Dhamanmal Issardas in Dubai, concerns a Tiradas Dhamanmal, a different man.)
• 1950: First marriage ended. Migrated to Britain; studied textiles in Scotland and traded as importer/wholesaler of shirts (ADB). One ADB-quoted source says he studied textiles at Leeds.
• Until November 1958: Employed by K. Chellaram and Sons (London) Ltd — a major Sindhi textile-trading house, with branches in Nigeria, Hong Kong, Indonesia (Wikipedia: Kishinchand Chellaram). This is the route by which Khemlani most likely reached Singapore / Hong Kong / Manchester before settling in Glasgow.
• 1956: Founded The Castle Manufacturing Company in Glasgow.
• November 1958: Left Chellaram, went full-time at Castle Manufacturing; doing business with J. Vaughan & Co Ltd, Stockwell Street, Glasgow (warehousemen, textiles).
• January 1959: Fire at J. Vaughan & Co’s Edinburgh premises (later revealed as arson / insurance fraud). Hassaram subsequently “prepared 23 invoices as if the goods had been delivered, but in point of fact they had not been delivered” — his own trial testimony, 1964.
• 12 April 1961: Naturalised as a British subject, certificate R1/35287 (TNA, HO 334/871/35287), Home Office reference H 93811, in the name Tirathdas Hassaram, “Country of Nationality or Birth: India; City or Town: Sindh.” This is the canonical original-name document.
• 21 February – April 1964: T. Hassaram & Co Ltd (registered office 93 Hope Street, Glasgow) is wound up by the court. A creditor, M. Wilkinson & Co Ltd of Bradford, petitioned the Sheriff at Glasgow on 21 February 1964 (Edinburgh Gazette 25 February 1964, p.122); the winding-up order followed on 9 March, with David Flint as official liquidator (20 March 1964, p.177); creditors met at Mann Judd Gordon & Co, 142 St Vincent Street, on 17 April 1964. That notice describes the company as “also trading in the name of The Castle Manufacturing Company” (10 April 1964, p.228), so Castle Manufacturing was by then a trading name of T. Hassaram & Co, not a separate company.
• 11 May 1964: Witness for the prosecution at the High Court of Glasgow in HMA v Andrew Sirel Maxwell and Thomas Shaw (directors of J. Vaughan & Co). Reported in Evening Times, Glasgow: “Tirath Hassaram, 43-year-old, Indian-born Glasgow importer and exporter, now a British subject, admitted he knew that by doing this he was helping the firm to collect ‘more money’ from the insurance company than they would have done.” Address given as 37 Stonefield Drive, Paisley.
• 12 May 1964: Glasgow Herald: detailed account quoting Hassaram on the warehouse stock-value discrepancy (£54,246 claim; ~£19,201 actually in warehouse).
• 1964 (personal bankruptcy claim unresolved): Freney (1985), citing The Australian, 17 October 1975, reports an undischarged personal bankruptcy in Scotland in 1964. The saved Edinburgh Gazette, 20 March 1964, p.177, instead documents the court winding-up of T. Hassaram & Co Ltd on 9 March. A company liquidation does not establish its director’s personal bankruptcy. No personal sequestration notice has been located in the earlier search, but the search has not been independently reproduced and OCR omissions remain possible. An earlier draft of this file favoured a newspaper conflation as the explanation; that is a hypothesis, not a settled correction. The 1971 English personal bankruptcy is separately documented. The newly read Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 1975, p.12, distinguishes a 1971 personal bankruptcy from a 1964 Bangor factory winding-up; see its entry below. That does not settle the different Scottish claim or identify the Bangor business.
• 25 May 1966: Further creditors’ meeting on T. Hassaram & Co (David Flint, Official Liquidator).
• 22 July 1968: Khemlani & Company Limited of 71 Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester 4 (“Export, Import and Emigration Agents”) is put into creditors’ voluntary winding-up: the resolution states that the company “cannot by reason of its liabilities continue its business”, and the liquidator, Leslie Harry Shipton, was appointed by the members and confirmed by the creditors (London Gazette 26 July 1968, pp.8297–8; final meeting 24 June 1971, 21 May 1971, p.5408). An earlier draft of this file called it a members’ (solvent) winding-up. Both 1968 notices are signed “W. Khemlani” (Secretary, 28 June 1968, 2 July 1968, p.7394; Chairman, 22 July), and nothing in them names Tirath, so this may be a relative’s firm; his own connection to it is unproven.
• 14 November 1968: Second marriage at Paisley registrar’s office to Sarah Ann Lambe (tearoom manageress). He used the name Hassaram on the certificate (ADB).
• 20 April 1970: Gobind Hassamal Ramnani changed name to Gobind Hassamal Dalamal by Deed Poll, enrolled in the Supreme Court of Judicature 20 April 1970 (London Gazette 5 May 1970, p.5098).
• 23 June 1971: Bankruptcy petition filed against him in the High Court of Justice as HASSARAM, Tirath (male), of 74–76 Old Compton Street, London W.1, MERCHANT — Matter 855 of 1971 (London Gazette, 11 November 1971, Issue 45518, p.12293 — the Gazette’s own issue metadata gives 11 November, not 19 November as an earlier draft of this file had).
• 5 November 1971: Receiving Order 1171 (London Gazette 16 November 1971, p.12515, which also gives the 30 November creditors’ meeting and 8 December public examination; reprinted in the Edinburgh Gazette, 19 November 1971, p.926).
• 30 November 1971: First meeting of creditors, Thomas More Building, RCJ.
• 3 December 1971: Adjudication Order; address by this time 50 Popes Lane, London W.5, “Sales Representative” (London Gazette 14 December 1971, p.13726). No notice of discharge has been found in the Gazette, 1971–1997. The transitional discharge provisions of the Insolvency Act 1986, Schedule 11 paragraph 13, are a research lead, not evidence of an individual discharge. An earlier draft of this file proposed 1989 without establishing his eligibility, any court orders or the applicable commencement calculation. His actual discharge date remains unverified.
• 8 December 1971: Public Examination, Court 46, Queen’s Building, RCJ.
• 1965–1974 — “nine years as a freelance commodities dealer”: Khemlani told Peter Game in October 1975 he had spent the period “barely breaking even” (Sydney Sun, 9 Oct 1975, quoted by Freney). Per Freney 1985 p.5: “From 1965 to 1974, Khemlani spent much of his time working in newly-independent Africa, trying to arrange deals of oil, sugar, cement and dozens of other commodities. He was one of the new breed of carpet-baggers who descended on Africa. While there is no concrete evidence that Khemlani was involved in arms dealing during this period, it would be strange if he were not. Freelance commodity dealers like Khemlani regarded arms as just another commodity, but one from which quite spectacular profits could be made.” This West-African freelance career is the most plausible explanation of how Khemlani later obtained Ghanaian and Sierra Leonean passports/credentials.
• 1973–74 (about six months before Connor): Becomes manager of the commodities division at Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) Ltd, London (incorporated capital £100, name confusingly close to the wealthy/respectable Dalamal & Sons of London / West Africa / Middle East — a real Sindhi trading family). Office address: 8 West Eaton Place, London SW1 (Belgravia). The firm’s letterhead in January 1975 reads “Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) Ltd, Agents-Dealers”, registered office 8 West Eaton Place, SW1X 8LS. It gives telex 917162 (answerback DALSONCOM), directors M.H. Dalamal, K. Dalamal and G.H. Dalamal, and “affiliated concerns” from Accra and Bombay to Singapore, Sydney and Tenerife (Allan Crawford’s letter of 28 January 1975, NAA A432, A1975/484 part 4, p.32). Johnson Matthey’s director told Charles Drover in November 1974 that the family’s London principal was “Mr. Gopu Dalamal” (see 11 November 1974). London press described his “real” office, however, as in the basement of a Bulgarian tavern (per The Age, 23 May 1975, p.1) — i.e. a different, much shabbier London location.
• 24 May 1974: Public notice in the New Straits Times (Singapore) “By Order of the Board, A. Withnall, Secretary” of Thomas Simson & Co. Ltd., London: “TIRATH HASSARAM, also known as T.H. KHEMLANI, also known as PETER KHEMLANI … has no authority whatsoever from Thomas Simson & Co. Ltd. to act or to engage Thomas Simson & Co. Ltd. … in any contractual obligations of whatever nature.” This is the earliest documentary use of all three names side-by-side and is a public-record warning shot fired six months before Connor met him.

The Loans Affair (Nov 1974 – Nov 1975)

The intermediary chain

Published accounts describe an intermediary chain (Bhojwani → Yu → Cranendonk → Shelley/Anderson/Karidis → Cameron → Connor). Individual links vary in evidential strength; an earlier draft of this file overstated their collective verification.

• Bhojwani: a Hong Kong businessman (his daughter went to school with Peter Game’s daughter in Melbourne — Game later used this connection to find Khemlani — An Eyewitness History of Australia, Gordon 1988, p.510).
• Thomas Ho-lung Yu (Hong Kong): a former Flying Tigers pilot, allegedly assistant comptroller of the CIA airline Civil Air Transport / Air America. Arms-and-commodities dealer. Telexed Cranendonk in Holland; Khemlani was sitting in Cranendonk’s office that day (Freney 1985, citing Cranendonk). Per Khemlani’s own self-aggrandising account on first hearing the Yu telex (Lloyd & Clark, Kerr’s King Hit (Cassell Australia, 1976), pp.141–2; quoted Freney 1985 p.5), Khemlani claimed a “friend” — a former secretary to the Saudi king named “His Excellency Sheikh Sikkar Gassan” — was staying at the Dorchester Hotel in London and would raise US$2 billion. No open source independently attests a Sheikh Sikkar Gassan. The Government’s own record of the telex traffic does use close variants of the name. The undated “Connor – Khemlani Papers” summary in Harders’s papers lists a Khemlani message of 1 December 1974 mentioning “His Excellency Sikkar Ge?on” (one letter overtyped), and telexes from and to a “Sheikh Gassan Chikaar” on 6 and 7 February 1975. The second of these is Connor’s telex saying he was prepared to accept $4 billion (NAA M4081, 1/12, digitised pp.2, 12 and 30). So someone using that name was in the telex traffic with Connor’s office; who it was is not established. Khemlani’s own telex to Connor and Clyde Cameron in November 1974, relayed by Hewitt, gives the fullest version. He “arranged with His Excellency Hassan Zaki advisor to the President of UAE Abudhabi and His Excellency Sikan Guessan [?] advisor to the Ruler of Muscat and one more party from Kuwait” to come to Canberra (NAA A1209, 1975/2525, p.66).
• Theodor “Theo” Cranendonk (17 May 1931 – 2018): Dutch arms-and-commodities trader, born Rotterdam; lived Breukelen (Utrecht) and later Estepona (Spain). Traded as “Globe Chemicals”. Joint-ventured 1975 with Yu, Gerhard Whiffen (Commerce International Singapore) and the American/Australian pair Brading and Booth on Vietnam-surplus arms to UNITA/FNLA in Angola.
• Tibor Shelley (Adelaide): jeweller/opal dealer with arms-trade interests; founder of Queen Stone Opal (Adelaide); Hungarian-Jewish refugee origin (asserted in secondary literature but not directly corroborated). Director of Opal Exporters Pty Ltd, signatory to an 8 Nov 1974 agreement with Khemlani / Globe Control Finance and Trade Co. (and Chinese partners) to arrange the cash loans.
• Tim Anderson: Adelaide commercial solicitor; Gerry Karidis’s lawyer. (Not the Tim Anderson convicted/acquitted of the Hilton bombing — that man was 21 in 1974.)
• Gerasimos “Gerry” Karidis AM (b. 1937, Lefkada, Greece — still living as of November 2025): Adelaide builder/property developer; emigrated December 1955; established Karidis Corporation Limited 1975; appointed AM in the Queen’s Birthday honours (Commonwealth Gazette S141, 11 June 1990) for “service to the building and construction industry and … to the Greek community”; memoir Building, Always Building (with Brian Abbey, Wakefield Press 2012). His first name is Gerasimos: so given in both the AM gazettal (“Gerasimos Karidis, 63 Light Square, Adelaide”) and US Embassy cable 1975CANBER04950; an earlier draft of this file wrongly had “Konstantinos”. An earlier draft placed a meeting with Clyde Cameron and Don Dunstan at an Adelaide party in October 1974, citing “Carney 2012 p.67”. The book attribution was wrong and the passage has not been located; treat this meeting detail as unverified. The Adelaide South Australian Greek-community connection is documented in Neos Kosmos, 25 Nov 2025.
• Clyde Cameron (Minister for Labour and Immigration; later Science and Consumer Affairs): brought Karidis to Connor. He is the source of the post-mortem judgment: “With the benefit of hindsight, I believe Khemlani was a conman.”
• Rex Connor (Reginald Francis Xavier “Rex” Connor, 1907–1977): Minister for Minerals and Energy 1972–75. “Big Australian”, former articled clerk from Wollongong, “the credulous ex-articled clerk” (Book of Leaks p.21). Code-named “Rockphosphate” in the Yu→Khemlani telex traffic of December 1974.

Khemlani’s Australian trip and the Loan authority

• 11 November 1974: Khemlani arrived Sydney from London with Cranendonk and Anderson; met at Sydney Airport by Karidis; flown straight to Canberra; checked into Lakeside Hotel, then Parliament House. Karidis introduced him to Cameron, then Connor. Almost immediately a preliminary meeting with Jim Cairns (Deputy Prime Minister; he did not become Treasurer until December 1974), Sir Lenox Hewitt (Permanent Head, Dept. of Minerals and Energy), Cameron, Karidis, Anderson and Shelley.
• 11 November 1974: Charles Drover of the London solicitors Coward Chance telexed Sir Lenox Hewitt (“For Sir Leonard Hewitt”, 17.56 London time) after seeing P.J.C. Firth of Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 1, p.11; first entry in the “Connor – Khemlani Papers” summary, M4081, 1/12, p.1).
  • Firth said Khemlani “was the hard-working manager of Dalamal and Sons (Commodity) Ltd. and was well known to him”.
  • The rest of Firth’s reference described the Dalamal family business: “an old Pakistani firm which moved the main part of its business to London on the partition of India and Pakistan”, whose “principal in London is Mr. Gopu Dalamal”, a family “well known for being wealthy” for whom Johnson Matthey were bankers. Dalamal dealt in “fairly large sums” and “invariably act as middle men”.
  • Khemlani had asked Firth for a letter of introduction dated 6 November 1974, saying “he was invited by the Australians to come”. Firth knew of Cranendonk but “very little about him”, and had “no knowledge whatsoever of the details” of the money-raising.
  • The reference therefore vouched for the wealthy family firm and for Khemlani as an employee, not for the £100 commodities company or its capacity to raise money. Notes made on 27 October 1975 by the High Commissioner in London, Sir John Bunting, record that Drover, at Hewitt’s instigation, had checked the bona fides of Dalamal with P. Firth of the bank Johnson Matthey in November 1974 (NAA A1209, 1975/3168, pp.12 and 19). At the Reserve Bank meeting of 21 December 1974 Connor said Khemlani had come with an introduction from “(Johnson’s?) (merchant bankers) of London”, and that Drover, “who acted for some lesser Arab rulers”, had reported Khemlani “in good repute and well-known” (NAA M4081, 1/29). Johnson Matthey later called its part “normal banker’s courtesy in giving Dalamals a letter of introduction for their manager” (see 27 October 1975). The next day, 12 November, Hewitt wrote to “Mr. Tiraty Hassaram Khemlani” confirming what Connor and Clyde Cameron (Minister for Labor and Immigration) had said on 11 November. The Government was “interested in overseas borrowings of the magnitude you mention, up to a total of approximately $US4,000 million, in blocks of $US500 million, repayable at the end of twenty years”. Negotiations could begin “on receipt of authentic information of the availability of such funds from a lender”, for example “a letter from Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd. conveying this information, accompanied by an indication of the names of the principals” (NAA A1209, 1975/2525, p.42; tabled 9 July 1975, Hansard p.3613). This is the “letter given to K by Sir LH on 12 November” cited in Connor’s telex of 4 December (NAA M4081, 1/12, pp.1–2). An earlier draft added a 5 December London meeting and cited AIM Network Part 2; that page did not substantiate the meeting when checked.
• 3 December 1974: Khemlani telex to Connor (cited in Kelly’s Dismissal): scheduled deal progress.
• 6–8 December 1974: D.J. Rose’s evidence at the Sankey committal describes Sydney discussions at the Department of Minerals and Energy. The report places Khemlani among the additional participants on 7 December, when draft documents were produced, and again on 8 December. Source: “Minister disagreed with loan advice, court told”, Canberra Times, 1 February 1979, pp.1 and 7, Trove 136977869. An earlier draft of this file mentioned only 7 December and speculated that a reported 5 December London meeting made a date error likely. That travel inference is unsupported, and the London meeting’s cited source has not been substantiated.
  • Rose’s own statement, written in January 1976 for the Attorney-General, fills in the detail (NAA M4081, 1/40, pp.21–27).
  • On Friday 6 December Hewitt told a Sydney meeting that “intermediaries for the unnamed lenders in the Middle East had arranged for the moneys to be available in a first class bank in Switzerland”. The meeting included Larkin of Minerals and Energy, Broinowski and Griffin of the Sydney merchant bank Darling and Co., and E. O’Halloran of the solicitors Freehill, Hollingdale and Page.
  • The terms on offer were 20 years at no more than 7.8 per cent, with a single compound-interest repayment.
  • Rose was told “that, on the direction of the Prime Minister, The Treasury was to be kept completely ignorant of the transaction until it was consummated”.
  • On 7 December “the intermediaries then arrived”: “Mr T. Khemlani, Mr Cranendonk, Mr Karidis, Mr T. Anderson (a youngish solicitor of Adelaide), and Mr Pinkerton (said to have been an accountant from Adelaide)”.
  • On 8 December Rose told Khemlani that the Commonwealth could not pay him a commission without a parliamentary appropriation. “Mr Khemlani said that the commission must be kept secret”, and Broinowski told him the Government could not keep it secret.
  • Discussing “the commission of 2½%” with the intermediaries out of the room, Connor “said he would take the money because it would be ‘cheap money’ even with payment of the commission”.
• 12 December 1974: Telex from Thomas Yu in Hong Kong to Khemlani in London — the “AG Tall Man” message: “AG (Australian Government) Tall Man does not want to have anything to do with the Reserve Bank in London on the AG Project as that will attract publicity. … He gave us express instructions to request you and your bank to stay away from the Reserve Bank in London. … Tall Man told us that the most vital minister in this project is the Rockphosphate (apparently Connor). … Furthermore the AG Tall Man instructs us to use only codes for the names of all the ministers involved in this project.” (Book of Leaks p.72.) The “Tall Man” has not been identified in the material checked for this timeline.
• 13 December 1974: Executive Council authority for Connor to raise US$4 billion for “temporary purposes” (bypassing the Loan Council). Governor-General Kerr was not present; he signed the minute the next day.
• 13 December 1974 (the Scotland Yard check): Treasury had asked Scotland Yard about Khemlani without telling ministers. According to a signed statement by J.T. Larkin, a First Assistant Secretary in the Department of Minerals and Energy, dated 23 May 1975, the evening meeting at the Attorney-General’s Department that drafted the Executive Council minute heard Sir Frederick Wheeler rebuke a Treasury officer, Mr Hay. Earlier that day Hay had passed Wheeler a message orally through the guard at the Prime Minister’s Lodge, while Wheeler was with Whitlam, Connor and others. The message reported that “Scotland Yard had failed to uncover any criminal record of Mr Khemlani”. Wheeler said there could have been embarrassment if the Lodge meeting had known “that the Treasury was secretly and without authority having Scotland Yard investigate Mr Khemlani” (NAA M4081, 1/15, pp.3–5). The account is disputed in part: Harders wrote to Menadue on 12 June 1975 that the four Attorney-General’s officers Larkin listed (Byers, Harders, Menzies and Rose) had not been present at any meeting where Scotland Yard was mentioned or a rebuke given (same file, pp.1–2). The formal statements Harders, Menzies and Rose wrote in 1976 on the circumstances of the 13 December meeting (NAA M4081, 1/40) do not mention Scotland Yard either way. The inquiry itself became public five days after Larkin’s statement. On 28 May 1975 Whitlam told the House, in an answer to Lynch drafted by Wheeler, that “in December 1974 the Treasury, through the Treasury representative in London, made oral inquiries of Scotland Yard regarding Mr Khemlani. The report received was that Scotland Yard knew nothing detrimental to Mr Khemlani”. Whitlam had said on 26 May that there had been no Government investigation, and the press reported him censuring Treasury for acting without approval (SMH and Australian Financial Review, 29 May 1975, as filed in NAA A432, A1975/484 part 2, pp.131–143). A criminal-record check would not in any case have covered his 1971 bankruptcy, which was a civil proceeding.
• 14–17 December 1974 (the commission clause): The loan acceptance drafted on 13 December provided for the lenders to deduct at source a finder’s commission of 2½ per cent.
  • On the evening of 14 December Menzies, Rose and Larkin met the intermediaries at the Lakeside Hotel, Canberra: Khemlani, Cranendonk and a silent third man who “could have been Karidis”.
  • Khemlani said the lender bank had agreed to give two cheques on settlement, “one of these would be a bearer cheque that would be given to himself”; the officers refused.
  • He wanted every reference to commission removed. The intermediaries “appeared to be anxious to avoid bringing to the notice of the lender the amount of commission to be payable to Khemlani”.
  • On 16 December the draft named “Mr. Tirath Hassaram Khemlani” as receiving 2½ per cent “for services rendered to the offeror”. Khemlani asked for that to be replaced by “fees and charges of the negotiator (Mr Tirathdas Hassaram, Passport No. G621722)” (the number as Connor later quoted it from this draft; Rose’s statement types “D621722”).
  • The Solicitor-General’s final wording of 17 December set the fee at “2½% of the said amount of the four billion United States dollars (being $100 million United States dollars) being fees and charges of the negotiator (Mr. Tirathdas Hassaram) and on his account only”.
  • After Khemlani left the 16 December meeting, Wheeler warned Minerals and Energy “in very strong terms against giving any official letter to Mr. Khemlani that he could use for any kind of official credential from the Australian Government”.
  Sources: statements of A.C.C. Menzies and D.J. Rose, NAA M4081, 1/40, pp.5, 10–14 and 38–40.
• 16–20 December 1974 (the Zurich failure): Connor gave Khemlani a letter of identification dated 16 December, and Khemlani left Canberra at 5 p.m. that day for London. The letter, addressed to “Mr. Tiraty Hassaram Khemlani, Manager, Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) Ltd.”, reads: “As I told you this morning I have been authorised by Executive Council decision of the Australian Government to borrow a sum in the currency of the United States of America not exceeding the equivalent of four thousand million dollars.” It says the Federal Reserve Bank of New York wanted to know “the present holders of the currency and their location” for “the Petrodollars”, and thanks Khemlani for his “offer to return to Zurich” with Reserve Bank officers (NAA A1209, 1975/2525, pp.166–167; tabled 9 July 1975, Hansard p.3617). On 17 December Connor wrote to the President of the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) introducing Larkin as authorised to discuss the borrowing, and Larkin and the Reserve Bank’s Mr Mallyon flew to Zurich to meet Khemlani there. Khemlani did not arrive, blaming an accident at London airport; the Reserve Bank checked and found the story untrue, its officers having travelled on the flight he was booked on. On the evening of Friday 20 December he telephoned Connor from London, saying he had met “the Administrators (of the Emirate Trust Fund)”. The Reserve Bank Governor, Sir John Phillips, declined to send UBS a coded message whose meaning he did not know, so Connor sent the telex himself, using a code Khemlani gave him. UBS replied that it knew of no such funds, that the amount “exceeds by far” any financing it knew of, that it saw “no validity in the proposal”, and that it did not deal with such intermediaries. Sources: record of the meeting of 21 December 1974 by D.J. Rose of the Attorney-General’s Department, dated 24 December 1974 (NAA M4081, 1/29, pp.1, 3–6); “Connor – Khemlani Papers” summary (NAA M4081, 1/12, pp.3–6).
  • Treasury’s later account adds that Mallyon and Bartley (Reserve Bank), Larkin and Drover “found Mr Khemlani on the U.B.S. premises after hours, following two days in which Mr Khemlani repeatedly failed to keep appointments”, and that Mallyon “later conveyed to Treasury his strong suspicion that a fraud may have been planned”.
  • Treasury also judged that what Khemlani “all along really wanted was ‘a firm letter of commitment and the signed acceptance’”, possibly so that his backers “could make a case for a claim”, and that “there is no evidence the loan funds ever existed” (Treasury comments of 7 November 1975 on his statutory declaration, NAA A432, A1975/484 part 7, p.161).
• 21 December 1974 (Reserve Bank meeting): At noon in the Reserve Bank building, Canberra, the Acting Prime Minister and Treasurer Jim Cairns, Connor, the Attorney-General Lionel Murphy, Wheeler, Phillips, Menadue and officials of three departments reviewed the episode.
  • Phillips pointed out that Khemlani’s firm “had a capital of £100” and said Khemlani was “no doubt hawking the documents all around Europe”.
  • Cairns asked where Khemlani could be getting the money to meet his costs. Connor answered that he was “domiciled in the U.K.” and that Drover called him a man “of considerable substance”.
  • Cairns ruled that “there should be no more dealings with Mr K”. Connor said there would be “none by him”, and the same day telexed Khemlani that the loan would not be pursued.
  • Murphy closed the meeting by telling Connor it had been “good trying”.
  Sources: NAA M4081, 1/29; M4081, 1/12, p.6.
• 23–27 December 1974: Khemlani told Cranendonk the arrangements would now go through the Swiss National Bank. On 27 December he circulated photocopied cheques:
  • $55 million in photocopies;
  • one cheque of $15 million, sent to a “G.P.C.S. Bajius” in Geneva with an undertaking about commission;
  • a letter to an unidentified recipient enclosing cheques for $135 million and referring to “receipt of cheque for the Commission from the borrowers for US 185 million”.
  The summary does not say whether the cheques were genuine (NAA M4081, 1/12, pp.6–7).
• 7 January 1975: The 13 December authority was revoked by Order-in-Council (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.8). The same day Khemlani told Connor that the commission problem had been overcome by an issue at 100 per cent and a higher interest rate of 8.35 per cent, and Connor told him to see Hewitt in Paris. On 8 January Connor telexed that 8.35 per cent at an issue price of 100 per cent would be acceptable. Through January the summary records a series of claims by Khemlani:
  • he had brought “Sheikh from Muscat to London”;
  • he was acting “with approval of Saudi Arabia”;
  • he was in Washington seeking clearance with a “Dr. Aboudi Kosta”, described as secretary to the King of Saudi Arabia;
  • his London house had been broken into.
  Connor told a meeting in Senator Wriedt’s office on 11 June 1975 that “during January” he had agreed to Khemlani continuing his inquiries (NAA M4081, 1/12, pp.8–10; M4081, 1/29, pp.7–8).
  • 8 January: the Dolmac contract. Writing to him as “Tirathdas Hassaram”, Dolmac Consultants of Tehran (L. MacDonald’s firm) confirmed an agreement. He was to deposit “all the original documents … showing that you are already authorised to negotiate a loan” in “our bank”. Dolmac’s finance group would raise about US$4 billion at 8.35 per cent compounded over 20 years. Khemlani deposited the documents at the Moscow Narodny Bank in London that day (NAA A1209, 1975/2400 part 1, pp.250–252 and 261). Dolmac’s letter of 28 January, which Lynch made public in June, claimed an “exclusive mandate” from Whitlam, Cairns, Murphy and Connor “approved in council by J. Kerr”. Those are the four ministers who signed the December minute and the Governor-General who approved it. That fits Dolmac having been shown these documents, though no page read says what the deposit contained.
  • Khemlani introduced the Moscow Narodny Bank himself. His telex of 10 January to “Gerry and the Minister” ended: “PS Moscow Norandy Bank is working all out and their manager Mr Dicks is doing his utmost and this information given is confidential for you only” (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 7, p.119).
  • Connor’s call with Kosta, 16 January. Late that night Connor spoke by telephone with “Dr. Aboudi Kosta”, who said he “used to be the Secretary to King Saud”. Asked whether the money had been “mobilised into the Moscow Narodny Bank”, Kosta said yes “and that we could check if we wanted to”. Connor told him “the PM was very interested in the deal and was being kept fully informed”. Drover was to “check Kosta and Sheikh Chaker in London” (note for file by N.S. Jennings of Minerals and Energy, 17 January 1975, same part, p.108).
  • Connor’s telex of 25 January “expressly refers to the Moscow N.B.” and expected “confirmation of funds” from it on 28 January (Rose memo of 18 July 1975, A432, A1975/484 part 4, p.18).
• 28 January 1975: Second EXCO authority for US$2 billion. Connor signed the minute on 27 January (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.11), and A.C.C. Menzies’s file note of 12 June 1975 also gives 27 January. That Monday (the Australia Day holiday) Wheeler telephoned Rose at home to say that Connor was arranging an Executive Council meeting “to get authority for a borrowing of $1000 million through Moscow Narodny Bank, London”, and that Khemlani was expected in Canberra the next day. Rose’s secret file note of the call says Wheeler gave “official notice” of a borrowing “through the Moscow Narodny Bank Limited and Mr Khemlani”, and that Khemlani “was then in Singapore” and would meet Connor in Canberra on the Tuesday (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 1, p.198). An Attorney-General’s Department paper of April 1975 describes the 28 January authority as one to borrow up to $2,000 million “through the Moscow Narodny Bank Ltd., London (a USSR Government bank)”, with Connor “then dealing with the same intermediary as in December” (same file, p.120). That evening, at Parliament House, Connor asked Rose for a new minute for “$2000 million ‘as a start’”. The new drafts no longer mentioned commission; Connor said the Commonwealth “would not be responsible for any commission”. On 28 January Harders and Rose gave the Attorney-General papers “to the same effect” as those of 13 December, except for the amount (statements of Rose and Harders, NAA M4081, 1/40, pp.45 and 60).
• 3 February 1975: Khemlani visited the Moscow Narodny Bank in London. Connor’s telex of acceptance to the bank (received 7 February) opens “Following our reply of 31 January to your telex message of 30 January and subsequent to Mr. Tirathdas Hassaram Khemlani’s visit to your bank of 3 February”.
  • It says Khemlani “is present whilst the contents of this are being drafted and communicated to you”, so he had flown on to Canberra.
  • On the understanding that US$500 million was “currently available in blocked accounts in United States prime banks”, Connor offered to accept an advance of that amount. The terms were a promissory note at 8.35 per cent compounded annually over 20 years, at an issue price of 100 per cent (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 3, pp.56–59).
• About 7 February 1975: Khemlani was in Canberra “with new documents”. The Treasurer instructed that Treasury, the Reserve Bank and the Attorney-General’s Department examine them closely, and Treasury asked Minerals and Energy for them. “However, nothing more has been heard of the matter.” Source: Attorney-General’s Department brief “Matters to be raised with new Attorney-General” (Enderby took office on 10 February), NAA A432, A1975/484 part 1, p.171. The brief does not date the “Friday”; Connor’s acceptance to the Moscow Narodny Bank and Treasury’s request to check the documents are both dated 7 February (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.12).
• 28 January – 28 February 1975 (the Moscow Narodny Bank telexes):
  • On 28 January “Dalamal (Crawford)” gave a “Denenport”, described as an associate of “McDonald” (L. MacDonald of Dolmac Consultants; see 11 June 1975), the telex number and code for a Moscow Narodny Bank telex to Connor. Moscow Narodny Bank Ltd was the Soviet-owned bank in the City of London.
  • In its telex of 30 January the bank sought confirmation of a total borrowing of $4,000 million: an initial drawing of $500 million, the rest in lots of $100 million as funds became available, and a 1 per cent penalty clause.
  • Connor replied on 31 January with full terms for up to $2,000 million, and on 7 February sent the bank an acceptance for up to $2,000 million. Khemlani told Karidis on 4 February that it was “preferable that 2 billion to come from Moscow N.B.”. On 14 February Connor wanted to know why the bank had not answered a telex sent seven days earlier.
  • On 20 February Khemlani said the funds would be “channelled through Moscow N.B. London”.
  • On 27 February the bank sought confirmation of arrangements for $4,000 million on the terms of 7 February, “except that Swiss law will apply”. On 28 February Connor told it that no offers would be considered for six days.
  Source: NAA M4081, 1/12, pp.11–17.
• Mid-February 1975 (dating uncertain): Book of Leaks says a “new EXCO had gone ahead the day before” Sir John Phillips’s written protest arrived (an earlier draft called Phillips a Treasury deputy secretary; he was Governor of the Reserve Bank), and this file previously dated that decision to 14 February 1975. Note, however, that NAA Fact Sheet 239 records only two loan authorities (13 Dec 1974 and 28 Jan 1975), so the “new EXCO” may equally be the 28 January minute; the Executive Council minute books (NAA A1573, 1975/8) would settle it.
• 26 February 1975, 4.10 pm — “Wheeler Tapes”: Phillips to Wheeler: “I have got one nasty thought on this … he forges promissory notes. He has got Connor’s signature. He forges a promissory note and takes the money and hopes nobody will ask any questions for 20 years.”
• 28 February 1975: Connor telexed Seattle First National Bank (Switzerland) an offer to borrow $4,000 million for 20 years at 8.35 per cent against a promissory note for $19.89016 billion, the principal plus 20 years’ compound interest. In the following days the bank reported a “professional intermediary” and a “Mr. Rudolf Barberich” each claiming a mandate, and a “Deutsche Bank” telex whose signatory, it found, was not a bank officer but a client allowed to use its telex. Connor declared the arrangement lapsed as of 6 March (NAA M4081, 1/12, pp.16–18 and 21). The “terms already agreed on 28th February 1975” reappear in the Johnson Matthey undertaking of 27 May 1975.
• 6 March 1975: Hewitt wrote to Qantas “authorizing phone charges” for Khemlani to Hewitt’s own personal account (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.17). See Q9.
• March 1975: Cairns signed (apparently inattentively) a letter agreeing to a 2.5% commission to George Harris (Carlton Football Club President; b. 1922 St Kilda, d. 26 Nov 2007 Heidelberg, VIC; WWII Changi POW). The Harris letter was an entirely separate loan attempt running in parallel.
• 2 April 1975: Connor (in Tokyo) became entangled with the Overseas Development Bank (linked to Bernie Cornfeld and Robert Vesco). Khemlani spent night after night by the telex without result.
• 3–4 April 1975: The Overseas Development Bank in Geneva telexed Connor setting out its functions under his telex of 3 April; these included obtaining from the lenders funds “sufficient to pay all its charges expenses or commissions”. Brennan, the Australian Ambassador in Switzerland, cabled Canberra on 3 April after Connor telephoned him. His cable reported that “Khemlani is an agent of the lenders not of the Australian Government”, that Connor “will actually sign the loan agreement next week in London”, and that “the amount of the loan is four billion United States dollars”, although the January authority was for two billion. Connor then telexed the text of the letter Brennan was to issue: “The bearer of this letter, Mr Tirath Hassaram Khemlani, holder of British passport no. G621722 [faint in the cable copy] has been engaged in discussions in Australia with me regarding an overseas loan to the Australian Government … I am awaiting a message from your bank notifying an offer of funds on behalf of the lenders” (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 2, pp.146–150). Brennan handed Khemlani the letter on 4 April.
  • The same day at Geneva, Khemlani signed a document “holder of British passport no. G621722”. In it he authorised “Dr Sinha and/or Dr Jha full exclusive negotiating rights” for a loan to the Australian Government “as per letter of … R.F.X. Connor … dated March 25, 1975, addressed to me”. The amount reads “US DLRS 8 MILLIONS” in the Canberra cable copy, plainly meaning billions.
  • Keven Simon Gray of the Australian Consulate in Geneva attested the signature on 4 April. Lynch had the document incorporated in Hansard on 22 October 1975, and Foreign Affairs then asked Geneva how the attestation came about (cable of 23 October 1975, NAA A432, A1975/484 part 6, p.7). Brennan then asked the Prime Minister, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs (Alan Renouf), Hewitt and Menadue for information about the loan. A second letter “in same terms as 3/4/75” was delivered to Khemlani at an airport about 16 May (NAA M4081, 1/12, pp.20–21 and 26–27). On 11 June, asked what documents Khemlani had been given, Hewitt “(after a pause)” mentioned a communication in April “to a Geneva bank” (NAA M4081, 1/29, p.8).
• Late April – May 1975: The paper trail spread across Europe.
  • On 7 May the Australian Trade Commissioner in Milan reported promissory notes “signed by MME” (Connor) being deposited in the Württembergische Bank at Ulm. This is the Milan report raised in the Senate on 30 October 1975 (NAA M4081, 1/36).
  • On 9 May a Paris firm, the Société Auxiliaire de Mandat, wrote to the Banque de Montréal describing itself as the Australian Government’s “official mandatory” (agent under a mandate) for a loan of $4.3472 billion against a note for $19.890161268 billion (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.26).
  • Khemlani’s telexes of 3 May cite a “VIP” who “would not entertain Dr. Cairns loan” and would “only deal with K”, and promised Karidis a share of the “retrocession” (that is, of the commission).
  • Khemlani blamed delays on a terrorist attack at the Frankfurt Chamber of Commerce (1 May) and on the death of King Faisal (17 May).
  • In a telex to Dalamal on 27 April, as the summary records it, Connor said he understood the “desire of HRH to commence the transaction with an initial advance of Four billion dollars to be followed by a second advance of the same amount” (NAA M4081, 1/12, pp.23–27).
  • On 28 April the Mercantile Bank and Trust Company Limited of Freeport, Bahamas, signed by its president Robert E. Cordes and assistant vice-president Robert N. Lightbourne, issued a “letter of intent”. It went to Vernon McColloch of B. Susman & Co., London.
    • If a funding bank deposited US$4,267,365,000 in Mercantile’s trustee account at Chase Manhattan, New York, “for and on behalf of the Reserve Bank of Australia”, the Reserve Bank would deliver 197 promissory notes of US$100 million and one of US$190 million: US$19.89 billion due in 20 years.
    • The letter was to be shown to “the holder of British passport NR.737,822 A”.
    • The editor of The Age sent a copy to Whitlam and to the Opposition leader on 8 July 1975. Connor told Whitlam the next day that he had “no knowledge whatever” of this bank or of the Société Auxiliaire de Mandat, and that the passport number was not Khemlani’s (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 6, pp.33–35; part 4, pp.261–263).
    • This is the same bank listed as a candidate under Q9; the letter shows it in the loan paper trail, not paying Khemlani.
  • The same note keeps reappearing. US$4 billion compounded annually at 8.35 per cent for 20 years comes to US$19.890161 billion (calculation for this timeline).
    • That is the note in Connor’s offer to Seattle First National Bank of 28 February, and exactly the US$19,890,161,268 in the Société Auxiliaire de Mandat letter.
    • The Moscow Narodny telex of 4 February to Luxembourg and the Mercantile letter of 28 April offered more cash against the same US$19.89 billion note: US$4,347,205,374 and US$4,267,365,000. Those imply 7.9 and 8.0 per cent.
    • Connor accepted 8.35 per cent on 8 January 1975, so every one of these promoters’ papers was built on his note.
    • Treasury drew the consequence on 7 November 1975: “A lender receiving 8 per cent compound over 20 years would pay $US4,267 million for promissory notes with a future value of $US19,890.2 million”. “Mr Khemlani and his associates therefore stood to receive $US267 million to be shared with the lenders’ representatives, in place of the $US180 million that would have been due under the old arrangement” (Treasury, “Mr Khemlani’s Statutory Declaration of 3 November 1975: Comments”, NAA A432, A1975/484 part 7, p.164). Khemlani gave Peter Game the same figure. His revised proposal, he said, would leave “profit to cover expenses including commission on each loan of about 267 million” (same file, part 6, p.250).
• 20 May 1975: Whitlam revoked Connor’s loan-raising authority.
• 23 May 1975: Khemlani telexed Connor saying the loan was “within reach”; Connor replied positively (the fatal move) — his reply telex opening “Attention Mr T. H. Khemlani: Response your telex of 0310…” (previously attributed to Sexton 1979 p.334, an invalid locator for the 305-page edition; underlying telex still needs a correct citation). Same day, The Age, p. 1: “I gave loan letter: Connor – Pakistani money broker intermediary in Australian loan deal.” With photo of Khemlani’s “real” London office — in the basement of a Bulgarian tavern — and headlines “Money men say it’s funny money”, “Mystery man flew off to Beirut, says office”.
• 27 May 1975: Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd (director P.J.C. Firth) undertook, “On the instructions of Tirath Hassaram Khemlani”, to pay the London firm Fowkes & Son (attention Mr Henry Fowkes) up to £7,500. Payment depended on two events: a lender offering the Australian Government a loan through a prime bank “on terms already agreed on 28th February 1975”, and the Government refusing that offer. Claims had to reach the bank by 2 June 1975 (NAA A1209, 1975/3168, p.22). The bank’s covering letter of 27 October 1975 says the undertaking was written on Dalamal’s instructions and that Dalamal said Fowkes was acting for the would-be lenders. This is the “cash guarantee” invoked in Khemlani’s own telexes. In no. 3415 of 23 May (published in the Melbourne Herald on 13 October) he told Connor that “I shall put up bank cash guarantee of sterling 7500 pounds immediately” so the lenders “will then not be any more doubtful of the report in the paper” about the revocation. He said he had “immediately took the solicitors to Johnson Matthey Bankers at 1730 hours”. In no. 3417 of 24 May (published 14 October) he said the bank “shall deliver the letter of guarantee as agreed upon by Tuesday morning by hand”, which matches the bank’s letter of Tuesday 27 May (Canberra cable to London of 27 October 1975, NAA A432, A1975/484 part 7, pp.205–206; see 27 October 1975).
• 29 May 1975: Whitlam wrote to Connor asking for copies of all the documentation, directing that further proposals be referred to him and that “current discussions” be stayed (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.28).
• 30 May 1975: Harders made a note of a discussion in which Connor “admitted that he had given a copy of the Executive Council order to Khemlani”. On 11 June Connor and Hewitt “strongly denied” it (A.C.C. Menzies, file note of 12 June 1975, NAA M4081, 1/29, pp.7–9).
• 6 June 1975: US Embassy Canberra cable 1975CANBER03700 reports Cairns removed from Treasury after the George Harris correspondence on “Arab petro-dollar loans” surfaced.
• 11 June 1975: A meeting was held in the office of Senator Ken Wriedt, Leader of the Government in the Senate, with Connor, Menadue and Hewitt.
  • Connor called Khemlani “no more than an agent for unnamed principals” whose names had never been disclosed.
  • Connor said he had never heard of Dolmac Consultants or Mr L. MacDonald until the Opposition produced their letters, and that Khemlani had no authority to appoint them.
  • A.C.C. Menzies of the Attorney-General’s Department noted that the date of “the Dolmac letters” coincided with the Executive Council decision renewing the authority. Menadue thought that a coincidence, and wanted the Government to “cut itself off from Khemlani”.
  Source: NAA M4081, 1/29, pp.7–9. Senator Guilfoyle raised Dolmac in the Senate the same day.
• 2 July 1975: Embassy cable 1975CANBER04313: “Cairns offered 2.5% brokerage on a $2bn loan, contradicting his parliamentary denial. Crisis worst since 1972.”
• 3 July 1975: Embassy cable 1975CANBER04333: “Whitlam sacks Cairns (Mar 7 letter vs Jun 4 denial). Embassy calls government loan-handling ‘bewildering’ and ‘inept’.”
• 7 July 1975: Embassy cable 1975CANBER04389: “Whitlam recalls House for special 9 Jul session to table the Connor→Tirath Hassaram Khemlani letter authorising US$4 bn loan.” Describes him as a “London-based Pakistani financier born in Singapore.”
• 9 July 1975: Special HoR sitting on the Loans Affair. Documents tabled identify Khemlani as: “Mr Tirath Hassaram Khemlani, Manager, Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) Ltd, 8 West Eaton Place”. Connor first lists the intended uses of the $4 bn (gas pipeline, petrochems, uranium, rail electrification, harbours). The night before, checking the papers Connor meant to table, Menadue found “the series of six telex messages between 30 January 1975 and 28 February 1975 with the Moscow Narodny Bank”, and Whitlam wrote asking whether there had been earlier ones. Connor replied on 9 July that he had none (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 3, pp.7–9; part 6, p.35). That assurance did not survive.
  • On 18 July D.J. Rose of the Attorney-General’s Department listed papers newly obtained from MacDonald’s side, and noted that “in fact there was a direct message on 29/1/75”: a telex from Connor’s office at Parliament House to “Narodny Ldn” arranging a session “with attention of Mr Dicks”. There was “no copy on the Connor files as given to us”.
  • Rose added that Connor’s telex of 25 January “expressly refers to the Moscow N.B.”. He conceded that Connor’s answer might still be “literally correct” in having no “documents evidencing” earlier messages (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 4, pp.17–18 and 33).
• 24 July 1975: Embassy cable 1975CANBER04950: “Senate inquiry effectively ends after Gerasimos Karidis (‘Adelaide financial contact’) proves ‘polite but uninformative’.”
• 6 October 1975: Melbourne Herald publishes Peter Game’s “KHEMLANI TELLS” front-page scoop — extracted from 19 hours of secret tape-recorded interviews in London. Game had been tipped off by a Hong Kong businessman, Mr Bhojwani, whose daughter went to school with Game’s. Game won a Walkley Award for the story (announced October 1976). The Attorney-General’s Department received Game’s London wire copy on 8 October (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 6, pp.248–252). In it Khemlani makes several claims:
  • Connor’s letter of 22 March 1975, addressed to him at the Wentworth Hotel, Sydney, gave him “the go ahead … to raise eight billion U.S. dollars”, and he “had been in touch with the Minister in the past 10 days”.
  • After the June storm Connor told him by telex that “since the mandate I had was never revoked by him I should carry on”.
  • “At a meeting in Athens, in August” between Khemlani, Karidis and “the Arabs”, a telephone link was set up with Connor and “it was decided to hold the final meeting in Australia”.
  These are Khemlani’s statements to a journalist. The dated documents for the post-May contacts are the telexes published on 13–14 October.
• 8 October 1975: Connor on ABC’s PM programme denies communicating with Khemlani; compares Game’s coverage to “the ‘big lie’ technique of Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels.”
• 10 October 1975 (first October visit): Khemlani lands at Sydney Airport on the morning of Friday 10 October and goes to the Hilton Hotel. At the press conference he called, his business partner Alan Crawford took over and read a written statement in which Khemlani said his lawyers had told him not to comment because of a pending court action (“The law has been invoked effectively to keep me gagged”) and that he had come to “clarify with Mr Connor the position regarding the Australian loan” and to extend “our connections in the commodity field”. Crawford claimed a US$8,000 million loan from an international consortium had been arranged, that the Government might face a penalty for not taking it up, that the group’s expenses were “well over $100,000”, and that Khemlani and Connor had not spoken directly since June but had been “in touch” (AAP, Canberra Times, 11 October 1975, p.1, “Loan middleman alleges gag on ‘full facts’”, Trove 110662209).
• on/about 13 October 1975: Khemlani in Sydney with his documents; Opposition staff spent the period “poring over Khemlani’s suitcases in Sydney on or about 13 October 1975” (Sen. Walsh, Senate, 7 Nov 1979). A statutory declaration and the telexes proving Connor’s post-revocation contact were delivered to The Melbourne Herald (Peter Game) and — on the night of 13 October, by solicitors Messrs Con and Corr — to Whitlam himself; the Herald published them on 13–14 October (Whitlam, HoR, 14 Oct 1975: “the telexes which Messrs Con and Corr delivered to me yesterday and which were published in yesterday’s and today’s Melbourne Herald”).
• 14 October 1975: Connor sacked. US Embassy cable 1975CANBER06876: “Connor forced to resign after Khemlani’s telexes show contact continued past 20 May.” In Question Time the same day (Hansard p.2035), Ian Sinclair asked the Prime Minister “whether he has ever met Mr Khemlani. If so, where and when?” — Whitlam: “Mr Speaker, no.” (This exchange is the factual basis of the “I have never met Mr Khemlani” line an earlier draft of this file quoted as if verbatim.) Whitlam also explained the sacking: “I advised the Governor-General to accept the Minister’s resignation because I do not believe in the accuracy of the assurance which the Minister gave me that all communications of substance between him and Mr Khemlani were tabled by him on 9 July last.”
• 15 October 1975: Whitlam rules out a royal commission (“The facts which led to yesterday’s event were not disputed by anybody”) and notes that Khemlani “may consider that he has some cause of action against the Australian Government. The courts are there for him to take such action.”
• 16 October 1975: Khemlani leaves Sydney by air for Singapore. An AAP report says he denied being an undischarged bankrupt and said he had never been bankrupt. It also reports that he no longer claimed a commission or penalty from the Australian Government. A statement issued through Alan Crawford said he had travelled voluntarily and paid his own expenses, and placed his statutory declaration in Melbourne on 13 October. These are Khemlani’s contemporary claims, not independent verification of his finances or insolvency status. Source: “Khemlani: I’m sorry”, Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, 17 October 1975, p.6, Trove 250406917. The denial does not identify a bankruptcy jurisdiction or year.
• 17 October 1975: James Cunningham, “Khemlani denies report he is undischarged bankrupt”, Sydney Morning Herald, p.12, reports Khemlani’s denial at Sydney Airport before boarding a Qantas flight to Singapore (“I have never been bankrupt … There seems to be some mistake”) and a London Daily Mail account of a 1971 personal bankruptcy. As reported, the Daily Mail said that in 1971 he was “then operating a factory in Bangor, North Wales” and became bankrupt with debts of A$16,400 (an under-estimate, according to the Assistant Official Receiver); that at his bankruptcy proceedings he said he came to Britain in 1950, studied textiles in Scotland and became Glasgow manager of K. Chellaram and Sons (London) Ltd; that he then acquired personal control of the Bangor factory, wound up in 1964 with debts of about A$63,500; and that he was still undischarged, the Official Receiver’s office wishing to contact him. The same article quotes him: “I paid my own expenses and I did not come here at the invitation of any politician, nor did I advise any politicians”, and says he had come on other business involving sugar and crude oil (page image). Note the Daily Mail’s account is internally awkward (a factory wound up in 1964 but operated in 1971), and the London Gazette notices of 1971 give only London addresses (74–76 Old Compton Street; 50 Popes Lane) and describe him as a merchant, later a sales representative. The chronology distinguishes two proceedings, but this remains a newspaper’s report of the receiver’s records. The Bangor factory must not be equated with the Glasgow company without an identifying record. An earlier draft of this file lacked the article and speculated that the 1975 press conflated a Scottish company liquidation and personal bankruptcy.
• 16 October 1975 (NSW Legislative Assembly): Labor member Cliff (Heathcote Clifford) Mallam (Campbelltown) claimed under parliamentary privilege that Khemlani had “interrogated Australian prisoners-of-war for the Japanese”, and that Alan Crawford had run a pirate radio station in Britain on whose premises police had found a murdered man’s body. Outside the House he said his information came “on good authority” but would not elaborate (reported in the same SMH article, 17 October 1975, p.12). Khemlani answered from Singapore in a tape-recorded interview with Michael Richardson: “Khemlani denies he interrogated Allied POWs”, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October 1975, p.3 (page image). He denied the charge, but said that “in 1945 when the war ended such a thing was mentioned because I knew the Japanese”, that he “was cleared when the British came back”, and that he had “taken chances” giving as much help as he could to the prisoners, so the British re-occupation forces “were very happy with my role”. The Age of the same day carried “Khemlani: no link with PoWs” (Parliamentary Library clipping index; not yet read, and possibly the same correspondent’s report). Evidence status: the allegation rests on one politician’s unsupported statement under privilege; the only other source is Khemlani’s own account, which confirms that the matter was raised in 1945 but says he was cleared. No contemporary 1945 record has been seen either way. Mallam’s exact words should be checked in the NSW Legislative Assembly Hansard for 16 October 1975.
• 27–30 October 1975 (second visit): Khemlani re-entered Australia on 27 October and went on to Canberra with eight suitcases of documents (later eight briefcases in some Hansard usage). Immigration Minister Senator James McClelland told the Senate on 28 October that “attorneys in New York” had telephoned on the Friday night to ask whether a visa would be available, and that he had directed “the usual transit facilities, that is, he could stay here for another 72 hours” — adding, of the Opposition, “I have been awaiting eagerly to get a question on the Opposition’s client.” Khemlani was met at the airport by members of Deputy Opposition Leader Phillip Lynch’s staff who “spirited him to a local hotel” (US Embassy cable 1975CANBER07323, 31 Oct 1975 — “the whole episode, which in some respects resembled a badly scripted Marx Brothers film, made the Opposition look foolish”). On 29 October James McClelland referred back to “the orchestration of the previous arrival of Mr Khemlani”, confirming the two separate October visits (an earlier draft of this file conflated them). A further, more detailed statutory declaration followed on 3 November 1975 (NAA A1209, 1975/2400) — the one Senator Wheeldon dissected on 5 November.
• 27 October 1975 (London): On the day Khemlani arrived back in Australia, Harders telephoned the High Commissioner in London, Sir John Bunting. Harders said Whitlam “made it clear that he wanted the matter followed up”.
  • The issue was a “cash guarantee” mentioned in Khemlani’s telexes. A copy was supposedly sent to the Australian Ambassador in Berne, who had never received it. Harders’s cable that day describes Johnson Matthey as “the bankers for Dalamal and Sons (Commodity) Ltd. with which Khemlani was at that time associated as manager but from which he has recently become separated” (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 7, p.206).
  • Harders said “there is reason to believe that Khemlani and his messages are unreliable, to put it no other way”. Bunting’s handwritten notes of the call add “con man or untruthful” and “K. has changed sides - for reward”. These record Harders’s suspicions, not evidence of a payment.
  • Through Drover, Johnson Matthey’s director P.J.C. Firth produced the bank’s undertaking of 27 May (£7,500). Firth said the bank’s connection “amounted only to our normal banker’s courtesy in giving Dalamals a letter of introduction for their manager, and subsequently in entering into a minor commitment”.
  • Dalamal allowed the papers to be disclosed to the Government in confidence, for “defensive” and not “offensive” use, not to be released publicly or to Members, and Bunting gave a written undertaking to that effect.
  Source: NAA A1209, 1975/3168, pp.3–27, a Prime Minister and Cabinet file of Bunting’s notes and correspondence. Radio Australia’s bulletin of 28 October, in the same file, reported “the arrival in Australia yesterday of Mr Khemlani, who flew to Canberra”.
• 28 October 1975: Whitlam to Hansard: “there were many contacts with increasing frequency between [Connor] and Mr Khemlani — more contacts between him and Mr Khemlani than between my colleagues.”
• 28–30 October 1975: Multiple Senate exchanges on whether to summon Khemlani to the Bar of the Senate. Opposition explicitly refused to call him, preferring to bank the Statutory Declaration and the telexes — on 29 October Senator Douglas McClelland noted that Withers’s holding notice meant “the Opposition does not intend to move that the Senate call Mr Khemlani to the bar of the Senate”. The “Opposition’s client” jibe was Senator James McClelland’s (28 Oct; an earlier draft of this file misattributed it to “Don McClelland”); Senator Wriedt had already told the Senate on 16 October: “As far as the Government is concerned, Mr Khemlani does not exist any more.”
• 4 November 1975: Major Senate debate after Lynch produces eight briefcases of Khemlani documents in Sydney; details under Hansard discussion at https://historichansard.net/senate/1975/19751104_senate_29_s66/
• 5 November 1975: Senate Hansard pp. 1741-62 — Sen. Wheeldon: detailed examination of Khemlani’s photocopied passport and statutory declaration on Connor meetings; details of the midnight office procedure.
• 11 November 1975: Whitlam dismissed by Sir John Kerr. Fraser, in the day’s debate on Khemlani: “his agent, his intermediary, the person who was good enough to pursue $4,000m for this Government for 12 months — Mr Khemlani’s charges.” The “unholy relic” line was Deputy PM Frank Crean’s, not Whitlam’s: “the issue is not about the unholy relic, Khemlani” (Historic Hansard, 11 Nov 1975; an earlier draft of this file misattributed it).
• 25 November 1975: Telegram from Khemlani’s Sydney solicitor John Francis Licardy (sometimes mis-spelt “Lacardy”): “DLS 25,000 Aust offered for story contact me urgently for details.” Licardy was struck off the roll of solicitors in November 1976 and declared bankrupt soon after; in his own bankruptcy hearings (Registrar of Bankruptcy, Sydney, 439/76) he claimed Khemlani owed him $20,000 for services rendered in late 1975, and “continued to transfer large sums of money from clients’ accounts to his own trust account” even after action was under way to have him struck off (Freney 1985 pp.10–11). Freney adds that Licardy was at the time an associate of — and co-shareholder in St Antons Pty Ltd with — John Arthur Boyden, later a central figure in the Costigan Royal Commission’s Hamidan tax-fraud investigation and a Transia Corporation man; Freney’s pointed question: “Who recommended he use Licardy?” Lionel Bowen alleged in the House on 6 May 1976 that after Khemlani “skipped the country” Licardy’s bills were “finally paid … again by Mr Lynch”, i.e. by the Liberal Party (Hansard, 6 May 1976). In written answers to Whitlam in July 1977, Lynch (by then Treasurer) acknowledged a letter from Licardy: Khemlani’s request to appear at the Bar of the Senate “was put in a letter signed by his legal adviser and subsequently forwarded by me to appropriate senators”. The Attorney-General, Bob Ellicott, answered that he had met Licardy in Canberra in October 1975, and had rejected requests a solicitor made on Licardy’s behalf in March 1976 (Canberra Times, 8 July 1977, p.3, “Lynch tells of big loan offers”, Trove 110853754).
• Also present in Australia October–November 1975 with Khemlani: Alan James Crawford, Australian living in London, described as Khemlani’s “business associate”. Crawford had previously been involved with the offshore British pirate radio Radio Caroline and (per Senator John Wheeldon, Senate, 4 November 1975) had been “prominent in Scientology circles” and at one point “had been able to sell tickets to gullible Americans and others willing to pay hard cash for seats on the first commercial flight — to the moon.”

Commission shares (documents found October 2026)

What the official record does settle. The commission written into the December 1974 loan papers was 2½ per cent of US$4 billion, US$100 million. The lenders were to deduct it at source as “fees and charges of the negotiator (Mr. Tirathdas Hassaram) and on his account only”. Khemlani tried to keep the amount from the lenders, and asked for a bearer cheque for himself on settlement (statements of Menzies and Rose, NAA M4081, 1/40; see 14–17 December 1974). How Khemlani meant to divide it among the intermediaries is not recorded there. Khemlani’s own message of 27 December 1974 referred to a commission cheque “from the borrowers for US 185 million” (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.7).

Khemlani’s own account of the split (October 1975). In Peter Game’s interviews in London, filed as a Melbourne Herald wire copy that reached the Attorney-General’s Department on 8 October 1975, Khemlani said he would “get nothing directly myself, but my company will get a minimum of 15 million US dollars”, and that he would get a share “through my 20 per cent of the company’s net profit”. He also said written agreements divided the commission. Adelaide businessman Gerry Karidis, “an associate of Mr Khemlani throughout the loan transaction”, would get “seven million US dollars on each U.S. four billion deal” (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 6, pp.248–249). These are Khemlani’s claims to a journalist, not the agreements themselves. They are the earliest located source for the Karidis US$7 million figure. The Cranendonk and Shelley figures below remain unsourced.

The split, in Khemlani’s own annexures. Two documents annexed to his statutory declaration of 3 November 1975, which was tabled in the Senate on 4 November, set out the division (NAA A1209, 1975/2400 part 1). - The deed of 9 December 1974 (pp.170–171). - The parties are Khemlani of Dalamal and Sons (Commodities) Ltd; Theodor Cranendonk of Breukelen, Holland; Yu Shat-Fuk of Hong Kong; Gerasimos Karidis of Medindie, South Australia; and Tibor Shelley of Aldgate, South Australia. Each signature is witnessed by T.R. Anderson. - It divides the commission on “a cash loan for the Australian Government amounting to four billion United States of America dollars”. Khemlani and Cranendonk get one-eighth each, and Yu, Karidis and Shelley two-eighths each. - The division comes only after “an amount equal to one percent of the total value of the cash loan” has gone “to the Middle East representatives who have assisted the first party to acquire the fund for the loan”. - A “List of persons entitled to commissions and their respective amounts”, signed against every line by Khemlani in January 1975 (p.263):

This list is the documentary source of the Karidis, Cranendonk and Shelley figures. An earlier draft of this file attributed them, with a conjectural balance for Khemlani, to Sexton (1979), p.334, but the catalogued edition has 305 pages. Khemlani appears in it only through Dalamal’s US$7.5 million. That matches his October 1975 claim that his company would get “a minimum of 15 million US dollars”, which is US$7.5 million on each of two US$4 billion loans. Personal identity numbers of the other people on the list are in the file but are left out here.

Post-dismissal, second loans-affair re-emergence and Nugan Hand period (late 1975 – 1980)

• 20 November 1975: Sydney solicitor Danny Sankey lays a private information in the Queanbeyan Court of Petty Sessions charging Whitlam, Cairns, Connor and Lionel Murphy with conspiring to deceive the Governor-General over the “temporary purposes” wording of the 13 December 1974 loan minute. Khemlani is not a party, but the case became the only court test of the loans affair, and its fight over access to Cabinet and departmental papers produced the High Court’s leading public-interest-immunity decision, Sankey v Whitlam (1978) 142 CLR 1, decided 9 November 1978 (Wikipedia). Outcome under 16 February 1979 below.
• 31 January 1976: A State Department memorandum by Edward F. Fugit (action office: Bureau of African Affairs), originally Confidential, is indexed under the subject “Further indications of MPLA interest in private contacts with the United States/MPLA interest in purchasing arms”, with the tag “(KHEMLANI)” (State Department microfilm index P850107-0764, released on 25-year review in 2014; AAD index entry). Only the index is online; the text is on microfilm still held by the State Department. The tag gives only a surname, but it fits Khemlani’s 1983 claim to have raised money for “the Republic of Angola” (SMH, 24 March 1983), the MPLA-governed state proclaimed in November 1975. (His 1974 introducers Cranendonk and Yu were meanwhile shipping arms to the MPLA’s opponents, UNITA and the FNLA.) Getting the text needs a State Department FOIA request quoting the film number.
• 14 February 1976: Canberra Times p. 5: “London writ against Khemlani” — fraud-and-conspiracy writ in the Chancery Division of the High Court of London (Friday 13 Feb 1976), Miss Susan Garth trading as International Trading Centre, naming Khemlani first defendant, Mr Gobind Dalamal second, Dalamal and Sons (Commodities) Ltd third — over deals arranged in 1974.
• 26 February 1976: US Embassy Canberra cable 1976CANBER01477, CONFIDENTIAL — first US report of the Iraqi Breakfast affair (see “Iraqi Breakfast” section below).
• 27 February 1976: US Embassy Canberra cable 1976CANBER01553, SECRET — Whitlam (now opposition leader) tells US Ambassador Hargrove privately that he expects to be ousted “within a week”; confirms his awareness of the Combe/Hartley Iraqi-funding attempt; calls Bob Hawke “a pro-Israeli fanatic.” First direct documentary evidence of Whitlam’s personal knowledge of the Iraqi-money channel two months after the Fischer breakfast.
• 6 May 1976: HoR: Lionel Bowen, without naming him, pointed at Sir William Archer Gunn (1914–2003; former Australian Wool Board chairman) as a funder of Khemlani: “Who financed Khemlani? … Did they not come from a knight in Queensland? … I invite the Government to have a royal commission into what money was paid to Khemlani; from what source in Queensland that money came; and whether it came from a source very close to the Country Party” — and further alleged that “if they analyse Khemlani’s bank account they will see that the funds have come from people closely affiliated with honourable members opposite”, that Khemlani’s movements “were financed from the slush funds by the present Treasurer, Mr Lynch”, and that Andrew Hay’s European hotel bills and Licardy’s bills were paid the same way (Historic Hansard, 6 May 1976 — confirming Freney’s “H of R May 6, 1976” citation, which an earlier draft of this file could not verify because Bowen never says “Gunn”; Freney supplied the identification). Note: Gunn himself had been actively engaged in a parallel April 1975 attempt to raise US$3.7 billion in petrodollar loans for Australia, bypassing Treasury — see Wikipedia: William Archer Gunn. The US Embassy reported the exchange the next day (cable 1976CANBER03378, which also carries Whitlam’s allegation that Fraser had engaged US merchant banker Richard B. Todd).
• 18 May 1976: London solicitor Peter Foulkes, a partner in Foulkes and Son, tells ABC radio’s AM that his firm had been used as “trusted go-betweens” to pass messages verbally between “Dr” Khemlani and Swiss and other money brokers, while “not employed by anyone” and not acting as lawyers. He adds that any part of the loan above US$4 billion was to be paid into a separate Reserve Bank account, “to be used for defence or other spending of a politically delicate nature” (AAP report, Canberra Times, 19 May 1976, p.7, “Lawyer tells of loans affair”, Trove 131818221). Foulkes is otherwise absent from the literature; the claim is his alone.
• June 1976 (source lead, unverified): An earlier research pass attributed to Toohey’s Secret (2019), p.168, a reference to an ASIO officer discussing CIA suspicions in “The CIA, Labor and ASIO”, The Bulletin, June 1976. Neither the full book passage nor the magazine article has been inspected in this pass. Do not treat the reported suspicions as evidence of CIA action.
• 18 June 1976: The Age p. 6: “Khemlani on move again in dollar chase” — Ben Hills, roving correspondent.
• 21 October 1976: Canberra Times: Walkley Awards roundup — Peter Game (Melbourne Herald) wins for “Khemlani Tells”.
• 1976 (Oakes, Crash Through or Crash, p.135): alleges that two multinational and two Australian-owned companies had contributed US$250,000 between them to pay Khemlani to “co-operate with the Liberals” (i.e. release the incriminating documents). The Hawaiian Honolulu hotel-room telex (next item) was the documentary trail behind this.
• November 1975 / 1976: Per Toohey, National Times, 16–22 August 1981 (quoted in Freney 1985): “Early in November 1975, Whitlam received a copy of a message found in a Hawaii hotel room. The handwritten message, was allegedly the draft for a telex message sent to Fraser in October 1975. It detailed the ”chaos” which Khemlani was being ”funded” to cause … instructions that it should be coded before transmission, by calling a particular Honolulu phone number. The National Times has called the number. It was the Hawaiian headquarters of the CIA in 1975.” An earlier pass attributed a probable-hoax assessment to Richard Hall, The Secret State (1978), p.182, from a snippet. The full passage has not been checked, so both the wording and its application to this particular message remain unverified.
• 1976: Nugan Hand Bank incorporated in Cayman Islands.
• 13 January 1977: US Representative Elford A. Cederberg inserted Anthony Paul’s “The Sobering Story of Australia’s Big Spending”, from the January 1977 Reader’s Digest, into the Congressional Record, vol.123, pp.1113–1114. Its Khemlani subsection used the attempted loan to criticise Labor’s economic management and alleged a 2.5% commission. This documents the affair’s use in American political argument. It is a reprinted magazine article, not a congressional investigation or independent verification of loan terms (official scan).
• 25 February 1977: Khemlani’s Sierra Leone passport issued (per same source).
• 5 April 1977: Citizens National Bank of Chicago reports to the FBI that US$2 million in blank money orders are missing from a shipment from New York — the underlying theft that will catch Khemlani in 1979–80. (FBI Agent Bolling deposition, quoted Book of Leaks p.73.)
• 15 June 1977: A Haitian passport was reportedly issued to Khemlani; this date alone does not establish his appointment to an official role (per the bail-surrender list in 1981, Book of Leaks p.73).
• c. 1977: The Age / Herald headline: “Khemlani resurfaces — in Hong Kong” (file shows the cutting). Per Freney 1985: from 1977 Khemlani was already “the director of commercial and financial affairs of Onocoro Petrole, a petroleum corporation owned by the government of the Caribbean nation of Haiti” (Freney’s own citation is Toohey, National Times, 16–22 Aug 1981) — i.e. the ONACORA role pre-dates the 1979 State Dept cables by two years and matches the 15 Jun 1977 passport issue.
• 22–30 October 1977: Stayed at the Gateway Motel, Adelaide. Raised by Senator Steele Hall in a Question without Notice on 8 November 1977 (Historic Hansard): “Is the Leader of the Government in the Senate aware that Mr Khemlani of the loans affair reputedly stayed at the Gateway Motel in Adelaide from 22 to 30 October this year? As Mr Khemlani is reported to have made telephone calls to Canberra, does the Minister believe that there is any possibility that he could be involved in planning the Australian Labor Party’s financial policy prior to the election campaign?” Senator Reg Withers (Leader of Government) replied that Khemlani would “most probably go back to his other old contact” (i.e. Clyde Cameron) and added that the Labor Party would have to go off to “old potato chips and monkey nuts to be able to do any dealings” — a riff on Khemlani’s London nickname “Old Rice and Monkey Nuts”.
• 1 November 1977: Khemlani’s UK passport issued in Singapore (per same source). Three different countries’ passports in nine months (Feb–Nov 1977), all from places where the issuing-state was either an oil-broker pretext (Haiti, Sierra Leone) or a residence-renewal (UK in Singapore).
• August 1978: Khemlani met Nugan Hand officials in Singapore and outlined four projects.
• 18 September 1978: Khemlani’s formal proposal to Nugan Hand.
• 19 September 1978: Michael Hand (Nugan Hand co-founder, ex-CIA covert operator in SE Asia) wrote to Khemlani at his Odyssey Trading Corporation, Grand Cayman address, endorsing the four projects, including “Project Olives” — Nugan Hand to be recipient of US$5 million/month from “various parts of the world” on behalf of an Italian VIP-protection / anti-terrorist company, with funds notified to Chase Manhattan / its Swiss subsidiary / an “unspecified party” in Rome. Plausible 1978 Italian-firm candidates (untested): Stibam International Transport (Henri Arsan’s Milan firm, later linked by Italian magistrates to Gladio-adjacent laundering); the post-Moro private VIP-bodyguard market (Aldo Moro had been kidnapped 16 March – 9 May 1978).
• December 1978: Khemlani telexed Nugan Hand officer Graeme Steer: “Your no. one and two are very interesting for the said allocation was given to me by the president, cash payment was to be 4.2 billion.”
• 1978–79: Khemlani–Nugan Hand telexes about Philippine peso shifts via Singapore and Saudi Arabia, and Indonesian oil deals. Khemlani worried Hand was trying to elevate Nugan Hand from trustee banker to dealmaker, cutting Khemlani out.
• 30 January – 16 February 1979: The Sankey committal hearing runs at Queanbeyan Petty Sessions. Evidence includes D.J. Rose’s account of the December 1974 Sydney meetings with Khemlani (above) and testimony from Sir Frederick Wheeler. On 16 February 1979 the magistrate discharges Whitlam, Cairns and Murphy (Connor had died in 1977) for insufficient evidence (Canberra Times, 17 February 1979, p.1, “Sankey’s conspiracy charges dismissed”, and p.13). The Commonwealth later put its costs at A$223,777 (Canberra Times, 19 September 1979, p.1).
• 23 August 1979: Per Bolling’s later deposition: US$1 million of the stolen Chicago money orders “transported out of the US at Khemlani’s direction.”
• 1979: Khemlani as “Board Member and Commercial & Financial Manager” of ONACORA, Haiti — rendered in cable 1979PORTA04879 as the “Haitian National Office for the Sale and Refining of Petroleum Products” (the cable gives only this English gloss; the underlying French expansion of the acronym is not spelled out in any open source, and the French form given in an earlier draft of this file was a reconstruction). (Toohey & Wilkinson Book of Leaks p.74 mis-spell the body as “Onocoro Petrole”; Freney 1985 also uses “Onocoro Petrole”; the two State Department cables confirm the ONACORA form.) Authorised by Minister of Mines and Energy Resources Fritz Pierre-Louis to negotiate (but not to sign) OPEC oil deals on behalf of the Government of Haiti.
• 10 October 1979: State Dept cable to Port-au-Prince (1979STATE265362): “MR KEMLANI (PHONETIC) … Pakistani national … personal representative of President [Jean-Claude] Duvalier in a petroleum marketing scheme” — fielding inquiries from petroleum companies in Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma. The “OPEC largesse” was attributed to “humanitarian assistance and payoff for Haiti’s favourable votes in UN and other fora.”
• 19 October and 9 November 1979: Opposition Leader Bill Hayden referred publicly to Khemlani’s Haiti work in Melbourne speeches to the Economic Society on 19 October (p.7) and the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce on 9 November (pp.3–4). In November he joked that the Fraser Government had borrowed over $4,000 million without Khemlani, who advised Haiti (October text; November text). These are two statements by one speaker, not independent employment records. An earlier draft applied the borrowing figure to October; that OCR renders the amount differently, so the figure here is taken from November.
• 26 October 1979: Fritz Pierre-Louis personally confirmed Khemlani’s credentials to the US Ambassador in Port-au-Prince (cable 1979PORTA04879, 29 Oct 1979): “KHEMLANI IS AUTHORIZED TO NEGOTIATE SUCH DEAL, BUT IS NOT REPEAT NOT AUTHORIZED TO SIGN ON BEHALF OF GOH; HE MUST REFER DEAL TO BOARD OF DIRECTORS FOR APPROVAL.” Pierre-Louis added that he “did not know [the] country which might supply petroleum for resale, indicating this was being handled by Khemlani”. Haiti had previously refused OPEC dealings because OPEC required Haiti to sever ties with Israel — a condition Haiti said it could not meet.
• 28 October 1979: Kuwait cable 1979KUWAIT04943: “THE GOVERNMENT OF KUWAIT DOES NOT SELL CRUDE OIL ON CONCESSIONAL TERMS TO ANYONE … Kuwaitis may have spoken with KEMLANI as they have with other visitors of varying degrees of reputableness during the past few months.”
• 8 November 1979, the name as a byword: Labor MP John Armitage called a separate attempt to obtain A$6 million in loans from Arab sources a “mini-Khemlani affair” and alleged use of Liberal MP Peter Johnson’s parliamentary office facilities. Johnson acknowledged three overseas cables concerning Queensland developments, said he intended to pay their charges personally and described the office-number use as inadvertent. This was an analogy; the exchange establishes no involvement by Tirath Khemlani (Armitage, House Hansard, p.2783; Johnson, p.2825).
• 20 January 1980: FBI Special Agent Charles Bolling swore out a warrant for Khemlani’s arrest, with a supporting deposition. Freney (p.10) and Book of Leaks (p.73) agree on 20 January 1980 (an earlier draft of this file claimed Book of Leaks said 26 January; the page photo shows 20 January). Bolling stated Khemlani had admitted in a tape-recorded conversation to having received the money orders “from members of the Mafia” (Book of Leaks p.73; Freney p.10).
• 27 January 1980: Frank Nugan found dead.
• 1980: Collapse of Nugan Hand Bank. Bank’s key American officers carry out “selective destruction” of records (Marian Wilkinson). Khemlani “walked out of [Charles] Murphy’s New Jersey home” in 1979 (per Book of Leaks p.70) / “over five years ago” (per National Times 15 Nov 1985 i.e. c.1980) leaving behind suitcases full of documents.
• Probably late January or early February 1980; certainly reported by October: Khemlani arrested by the FBI over the Citizens National Bank money-orders shipment, in New York. Book of Leaks p.73 has him “re-emerg[ing] in a New York court” early in 1980, soon after the 20 January warrant. Book of Leaks p.70 (and, following it, the ADB) instead speaks of “Khemlani’s arrest by the FBI early in 1981”. The 1980 dating wins on several checks, not all independent sources, set out under “Dating the arrest, bail and indictment” below; an earlier draft of this file treated the 5 Feb 1981 bail date as firm and left the arrest year open.

US prosecution (1980 – 1981)

The clearest single account of the whole criminal proceeding is Book of Leaks (1987) pp.72–74 + Freney 1985 pp.10–11, now checked against Brian Toohey’s earlier Australian Financial Review report as digested in Tribune, 29 October 1980. Reconstructed:

• 5 February 1980 (reconstructed, exact day not independently verified) (printed “February 5, 1981” in Book of Leaks p.73; see the dating note below): Released on bail of US$250,000, putting up $75,000 in cash himself, while four US citizens pledged assets of US$500,000 to cover an additional surety. Three of the four, “from New Jersey and Pittsburgh”, refused to comment to Toohey. Two of the four, per Freney citing Toohey, “are regarded by the FBI as being agents for the New Jersey mafia family”. The fourth, M.L. Wooldridge of Richmond, Virginia, told Toohey/Wilkinson he had only met Khemlani once but had staked the assets for the $500,000 bond “because I liked him” (Book of Leaks p.73). An 11 July 2026 sweep produced an unconfirmed Virginia name match for Wooldridge: see Open research leads below. The FBI-flagged pair were the two New Jersey men (Freney p.10); Wooldridge was the one surety who talked to the press. As a bail condition Khemlani surrendered three passports: Haitian (issued 15 June 1977), Sierra Leonean (25 February 1977) and British (issued in Singapore, 1 November 1977).

• 29 February 1980: Grand jury indictment, US District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn). Book of Leaks p.73 describes the charges as “possession and transportation of bonds known to be stolen”; Toohey’s 1980 report, closer to the documents, calls them conspiracy to possess US$1 million of stolen money orders and their transportation out of the USA. The charges named the defendant variously as Tirath Hassaram Khemlani, Peter Khemlani, and Tirathdas Hassaram. An earlier draft of this file gave “25 February 1981”, a date traceable to no source.

• 10 October 1980: Brian Toohey reports the case in the Australian Financial Review, almost certainly the article indexed by the Parliamentary Library as “Five years on Khemlani resurfaces in US court”, AFR, 10 October 1980 (ParlInfo press clipping media/pressclp/HNC042017195433; text not open online; no author given in the index). The Communist Party weekly Tribune (Sydney) digested it on 29 October 1980, p.3, “Khemlani’s $1 million ‘mafia money’” (Trove 259475704): Khemlani “is now facing conspiracy charges in New York”; the money orders were part of US$2 million “stolen from a shipment sent from New York to a Chicago bank in March 1977”; police said Khemlani told them the orders came “from the Mafia”; he “was indicted by a Grand Jury and is currently on $75,000 bail. Four Americans have pledged assets of $500,000 to cover his bond”; his lawyers had listed prospective defence witnesses in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore and Holland; and after his arrest “Haiti withdrew the passport it had given him” (new detail).

• 22 June 1981: Conviction and sentencing. On the prosecution’s motion the two major indictments were dropped, bail “exonerated”, and travel limits “extended to the world.” Final plea, per Khemlani’s New York lawyer Kenneth Kaplan (former AUSA EDNY 1972–77; Deputy Chief, Criminal Division; Chief, Official Corruption Unit; private criminal-defence practice from 1977): “misprision of a felony” — a US federal statutory offence under 18 USC §4, involving knowing concealment of a federal felony and failure to report it to the authorities. An earlier draft of this file described mere non-reporting as sufficient and inferred Mafia knowledge from the plea. Neither follows from the offence alone. Sentence: US$500 fine + three-year suspended sentence (Toohey & Wilkinson, Book of Leaks p.74; ADB shorthands this as “convicted but immediately pardoned”). Prospective defence witnesses (not in fact called) included Tony Baer (Hong Kong), Mori Moto (Tokyo), Teo Cheukang (Bangkok), John Eramanis (Singapore), A.T. DeLoos (Amsterdam), and Leo Rothsee (Miami) — a near-complete diagram of Khemlani’s late-1970s Asian/European/American business network (Book of Leaks p.74). Their identities have not been independently resolved in this research; the witness-list names should be checked against the court record.

• The US authorities told ASIO, oddly not the Department of Foreign Affairs, about the arrest (Book of Leaks p.70, which dates the arrest “early in 1981”; the Tribune digest of Toohey, 19 August 1981, says ASIO was told of the arrest “last year”). On the dating, see the note above.

• 19 August 1981: Tribune (Sydney) p.7: “Khemlani admits Mafia link” (Trove) — Toohey, by-line from The National Times, 16–22 Aug 1981, whose own headline was “Khemlani squeals on mafia mates” (ParlInfo press clipping HNC032017055125; an earlier snippet-only check reported a different date in Toohey’s Secret (2019); that book passage has not been reverified). Toohey raises three questions: (i) whether Khemlani had Mafia contact in 1975; (ii) whether he received US$400,000 from a private US company “to reveal the information that precipitated the ‘supply crisis’ in 1975” (sourced to “a well-placed National Country Party source”) (Book of Leaks p.74); (iii) what intelligence connection that US company might have had. The Toohey series also broke the Hawaiian Honolulu CIA telephone number story (above). The Tribune digest preserves two further details: “US authorities told ASIO — not the Foreign Affairs Department — of Khemlani’s arrest last year” (i.e. 1980), and “The CIA denies it had records on Khemlani but says the National Security Agency (NSA) has information on Khemlani’s role in the loans affair” — a contemporary published report of the CIA’s response about NSA material; the original agency correspondence has not been read (and a natural FOIA target). The Tribune’s own framing then links the stolen-bond Mafia network to the Trafficante wing and its Haiti/CIA overlaps. A second National Times piece, “Our secret arms deals” (30 August 1981, HNC062016216439), took up Commerce International and the Cranendonk/Yu arms deals.

Dating the arrest, bail and indictment

Book of Leaks p.73 prints the sequence as: warrant 20 January 1980; released on bail 5 February 1981; “then indicted by a Grand Jury on February 29, 1980”; sentenced 22 June 1981. The indictment cannot follow a 1981 bail release and also be dated 1980, so one of the two years is a misprint. The checks below support an arrest and indictment by October 1980. They make 5 February 1980 a likely reconstruction to the reported bail date, but do not independently establish that exact day:

1. Only 1980 has a 29 February. 1980 was a leap year and 1981 was not, so “February 29, 1980” cannot be a slip for a 1981 date unless the day is wrong too. “February 5, 1981” for “1980” needs only a one-digit error.
2. A contemporary report already describes the bail package in October 1980. The Tribune digest of Toohey’s AFR report (29 October 1980) says Khemlani had been indicted and was “currently on $75,000 bail”, with four Americans pledging $500,000: the same components Book of Leaks gives for the “5 February 1981” release, eight months before that date.
3. Other statements agree on 1980. The Times (London), in its Australia special report of 12 October 1983, described him as having been “indicted by a federal grand jury in New York for conspiracy in 1980”. Book of Leaks p.73 itself says he “re-emerged in a New York court” early in 1980, and the Tribune digest of Toohey’s August 1981 National Times piece says US authorities told ASIO of Khemlani’s arrest “last year”, i.e. 1980. Freney (1985, p.10), working from the same Toohey material, gives the bail terms but no date. An earlier draft said the 1981 year appeared only in Book of Leaks, overlooking its own snippet-based reference to Toohey’s 2019 book. These are not independent accounts of the original court records.

So the likely sequence is: warrant 20 January 1980, arrest before October 1980 (probably early that year), reconstructed bail date 5 February 1980, indictment 29 February 1980, some 16 months on bail in the United States, plea and sentence 22 June 1981. The Book of Leaks p.70 phrase “Khemlani’s arrest by the FBI early in 1981” (repeated in the ADB) is best read as an error carried from the misprinted bail year. The EDNY docket would confirm it.

The Pittsburgh address (unverified research lead)

The Book of Leaks (1987), p.73, says that three of the four bail sureties, the ones who “refused to comment”, were “from New Jersey and Pittsburgh”.

US people-search sites (FastPeopleSearch, TruePeopleSearch, SearchPeopleFREE, CyberBackgroundChecks and USPhoneBook) carry an entry for “Tirathdas Hassaram”, born September 1920, at 2045 Murdstone Road, Upper St. Clair, Pittsburgh, PA 15241, a suburb south of the city. That is the name form of the 1961 naturalisation certificate and of the third alias reported on the indictment, with the matching birth month and year (12 September 1920 on the naturalisation record). The sites show no dates for the entry and give his age as 105, because nothing in US records marks him as dead. The entry is repeated across the sites because they draw on the same bureau data, so the repetition is not independent corroboration. Only the search-result summaries have been read; the full record pages block automated access.

Public records describe the house:

• It is a single-family house built in 1976 (about 5,150 sq ft; Allegheny County parcel 0395-L-00060-0000-00). The “Unit 605” that the people-search sites attach to the address is a misreading of “Plan 605” in the county’s legal description of the lot, not an apartment number.
• The county’s Recorder of Deeds index shows the house was bought in May 1978 (deed recorded 22 May 1978, Deed Book 5940, p.207; the assessment file gives a sale price of US$175,000) by Gordon T. Brown, the grantee in the deed index. The people-search records place members of the Brown family at the address from 1978 and associate “Tirathdas Hassaram” with that household. The house was conveyed as a gift (a “love and affection” sale) in 2011.
• The name-searchable mortgage index (online back to 1973) shows no early-1980 mortgage in favour of the United States, as a property bail bond might have produced. That settles nothing: in Pennsylvania a property bail bond is normally filed with the county prothonotary as a judgment, and the Recorder’s online index of such “other documents” starts only in October 2001.

Reading. One explanation that fits is that Khemlani gave this house, the home of the Pittsburgh surety or of someone close to that surety, as his US address while on bail between 1980 and June 1981. This remains unproven: the entry is undated, no source names the Pittsburgh surety, and nothing else connects the family to Khemlani. Owning the house does not make Gordon T. Brown the surety, and nothing here implies wrongdoing by him or his family; the two sureties the FBI regarded as Mafia associates were the New Jersey men (Freney 1985, p.10). The EDNY docket and, if it survives, the appearance bond (which lists each surety’s name and address) would confirm or rule it out. An earlier draft of this file (fifth pass, 30 September 2026) removed the address on privacy grounds; Richard Bean restored it the same day, because it is already findable through Google, and then approved naming the family.

Final decade (1981 – 1991)

• c. 1980–81: Khemlani “had a falling out with ‘Baby Doc’s’ regime and was relieved of the position” of ONACORA director-of-commercial-and-financial-affairs (Book of Leaks p.74; Freney 1985 pp.10–11).
• 1982 (unconfirmed identity match): Notices for K B & Co (Manchester) Limited name “T. Khemlani, Director” (London Gazette, 2 December 1982, p.15800). An earlier draft included this as Tirath’s later career and linked it to K B (Import & Export) Limited. Neither the director’s identity nor a connection between the companies has been established.
• 14 November 1982: The National Times, “The Loans Affair tapes” (ParlInfo press clipping HNC052016249084): Wheeler’s tape-recorded protest phone calls of 20 December 1974 to ministers and officials opposing the Khemlani deal are published, with the famous Wheeler line to Whitlam: “Prime Minister, you will listen to me. I am drawing to your attention facts, your ignorance of which, will bring you down.” (Source: John Farquharson, Wheeler obituary, Canberra Times 7 Aug 1994 — Trove 118260996.)
• 24 March 1983: Sydney Morning Herald (quoted in Freney 1985 pp.10–11): “Khemlani resurfaces in Hong Kong” — claims to represent Arab oil interests prepared to put up millions to save the failed Hong Kong property developer EDA Investments Ltd (incorporated 15 Dec 1972, owned by the Chung family — George Tan of Carrian had begun as EDA’s civil-engineering manager in 1972; the larger 1982–83 Carrian/Bank Bumiputra Malaysia collapse was contemporaneous). Peter Dodds, managing director of Barclays Asia, said Khemlani had produced documents showing that he had been “involved in raising substantial sums of money for (among others) the Australian government, the Republic of Angola and Sierra Leone”. One of the letters produced by Khemlani was signed by the late Rex Connor. Khemlani handed around a visiting card describing himself as “roving ambassador and special assistant to the President of Haiti (retired)”. Presented himself as a director of Macwell International Investments of Hong Kong and claimed to represent a “bank” with headquarters in the London dormitory suburb of Stockwell. “Hardly the place where merchant bankers of the world put their offices,” said a Hong Kong banker. “It was something from Alice in Wonderland.” “Khemlani was laughed out of Hong Kong …” The same day The Age ran the story on its front page as “Khemlani still in the loans game” (ParlInfo press clipping HNC052016039399).
• 1985: Stewart Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Activities of the Nugan Hand Group, final report, Parliamentary Paper 369/1985 (digitised volume 2). Earlier research reported no Khemlani passage in the material searched. That is not a verified statement about all commission evidence. An earlier draft suggested withheld paragraphs were the likely location of his story; their contents have not been read and cannot be inferred. Wilkinson’s later reporting should be considered separately.
• 2–5 October 1985: A cluster of press reports on a 1983 attempt to resurrect the loans affair: Melbourne Herald, 2 October (“Loans Affair: new mystery”; “Still chasing that big deal”) and 3 October (“The mystery man who wanted to sue”, indexed under Bob Hawke); Advertiser, 3 October (“Search for the elusive pot of gold”); Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October, pp.1 and 9 (“1983 attempt to resurrect loans affair”). Known so far only from the Parliamentary Library’s press-clippings index and newspaper page indexes; the texts have not been read, so who tried to revive the deal, and with whom, is still open.
• 10 November 1985: On the eve of the dismissal’s tenth anniversary, The Sydney Morning Herald quotes Andrew Hay and Brian Buckley, former aides to Phillip Lynch, as saying that a Whitlam minister, not a public servant, fed the Opposition its information on the Khemlani loans in 1975. Whitlam calls it “a stunt” and says the leak could more plausibly have come from a Treasury official; he notes that Canberra rumour had long named a Treasury officer as the informant, code-named “Mr Williams” (Canberra Times, 11 November 1985, p.1, “‘No mystery about Khemlani dealings’”, Trove 127536637).
• 15–21 November 1985: The National Times cover-story this user’s file is from, p. 20 & 22: “Khemlani link with Nugan Hand” by Marian Wilkinson, Washington — Khemlani’s papers and suitcases left with Charles Murphy of New Jersey form the basis. First public disclosure of the Nugan Hand link. Brings out Project Olives, Odyssey Trading and the Steer/Hand telexes.
• 28 November 1985: Canberra Times: “Royal commission report Nugan Hand ‘not into drugs, arms’” (Trove 127541113) — Khemlani not named.
• 29 December 1986 – 16 March 1987: T. Hassaram & Company Limited is still in liquidation 23 years on. On 29 December 1986 the Sheriff at Glasgow called for objections to a note seeking Rankin’s appointment in place of William Hardie, who had resigned (Edinburgh Gazette 13 January 1987, p.58); on 16 March 1987 he let William Hardie resign as official liquidator and appointed Gerald Ian Rankin, Chartered Accountant (31 March 1987, p.477). An earlier draft of this file dated Rankin’s appointment to 29 December 1986.
• 6 January 1987: Des Moore, a Treasury deputy secretary about to retire and long suspected by Labor of being “Mr Williams”, the public-service “deep throat” on the Khemlani loans, denies it. He says some of the leaks came “from within the Whitlam ministry”, and that he has his own ideas about who Mr Williams was but no proof (Canberra Times, 7 January 1987, p.1, “Des Moore: I was not ‘Mister Williams’”, Trove 119473622). “Mr Williams” has not been publicly identified; the question is separate from, but adjacent to, the “AG Tall Man” lead below.
• 1987: Singapore corporate register entry for Labrador Drilling & Engineering (Singapore) Pte Ltd (petroleum & mining consultant services; marine engineering), 116 Middle Road #18-01, ICB Enterprise House: directors include “Shanti d/o Tirathdas Hassaram” (his daughter), Peter Michael Dwyer, Wayne Alfred Needoba — the Singapore residual of his network. ACRA’s open data identifies the company as UEN 198700750H, incorporated 23 March 1987, later renamed LPM Asia Pte Ltd, now struck off (data.gov.sg).
• 1980–1985, the name as a byword: by now “Khemlani” stood for any too-good-to-be-true petrodollar loan. Papua New Guinea, November 1978: Air Niugini’s general manager, Mr Grey, weighing a Sydney agent’s offer of Middle East finance at 2.2 per cent flat, wrote in a file letter that “Shades of Khemlani” raised doubts about its genuineness, but that investigating it cost nothing (National Airline Commission files released by the Transport Minister, Mr Okuk, Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, 20 June 1980, p.4, Trove 250599242; Khemlani himself is not linked to that offer). Canberra, November 1981: Treasury Secretary John Stone’s letter arranging a routine visit to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency asked for it to be kept “very tightly within the Treasury” because of “past sensitivities in this area of the world”, which the press read as a reference to the Khemlani affair (Canberra Times, 25 November 1981, p.1, Trove 126860587). Senate, October 1985: Senator Peter Rae called the Hawke Government’s Loans Bill 1985 the “Khemlani Affair Avoidance Bill” (Canberra Times, 18 October 1985, p.8, Trove 132372393).
• Last years — lived in a house in Paisley, near Glasgow, with wife Sarah. Business cards: “roving ambassador and special assistant to the President of Haiti (retired)” (per The Age obituary, 13 Sep 1991, quoting Peter Game).

Death and aftermath (1991 –)

• 19 May 1991: Died in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, of chronic heart disease, aged 70 (Paisley district, Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages). The Paisley Daily Express of 21 May 1991, p.11, contains the name “Hassaram” (newspapers.com page index; not yet read), an unverified lead that may be a notice; the page index alone does not establish that.
• c. 19 June 1991: Sarah Ann Hassaram (née Lambe) died, c. one month later, of a circulatory ailment. The Paisley Daily Express pages of 25 June 1991 (p.9) and 3 July 1991 (p.7) also contain “Hassaram” (page index only; not yet read).
• 13 September 1991: The Age, Canberra Times and Sydney Morning Herald obituaries (SMH p.8, “The man who helped bring down Whitlam”, ParlInfo press clipping HNC022016036382; Canberra Times via Trove 122383735). Notification reached Australia via Glasgow solicitor → Peter Game (b. 1927; Herald-Sun; 1976 Walkley winner for the Khemlani story; Melbourne Press Club Lifetime Achievement/Quill Award 2000; Australian Media Hall of Fame inductee; a reported 2019 profile and unsuccessful death-notice search do not establish his current life status; an earlier draft of this file said “died after 2008”, which was unsupported. His papers, including the tapes and transcripts of the 1975 Khemlani interviews, are at the NLA but closed during his and Betty Game’s lifetimes: see “Archival collections” below) → daughter Shanti in South Australia, who, according to the contemporary obituary, learned of his death on Wednesday, 11 September 1991. An earlier draft of this file equated notification with the newspaper publication date, 13 September. Quotes:
  • Jim Cairns: “He was a stranger to me. I know nothing, because I never knew him.”
  • Clyde Cameron: “With the benefit of hindsight, I believe Khemlani was a conman. He told [Mr Connor] he could do things that he couldn’t. It was a marvellous scheme. It went wrong because Khemlani was the wrong man.”
  • A second Canberra Times piece the same day, “Death brought barely a murmur” (p.2, Trove 122383816), adds: Malcolm Fraser had nothing to say; Ian Sinclair said Khemlani’s reputation had tainted the Whitlam Government’s financial dealings; and Jim McClelland, by then a former judge, called him “just a pawn” in the loans affair.
• 20 September 1991: David Armstrong, “Global Entanglements: The political economy of a Texas oil company”, The Texas Observer, vol. 83, no. 18, pp.11–14 (free PDF of the whole issue). A cover story on Harken Energy, George W. Bush’s oil company, whose Australian exploration Armstrong ties to the 1975 Loans Affair and the CIA. Khemlani appears only in passing (pp.12–13): Armstrong calls him “a well-known hustler with a long history of shady associations” and asserts, without giving a source, that the CIA eavesdropped on the Connor–Khemlani loan negotiations from Pine Gap. Not an obituary: the article does not mention his death. A companion piece by Armstrong, “Oil in the Family” (Texas Observer, 26 July 1991, from p.12; PDF), links Harken to Nugan Hand Bank through director Alan G. Quasha’s father, but does not name Khemlani. An earlier draft of this file called the September piece an “obituary article” on “p. 27”; both details were wrong.
• 2016 online; 2021 in print: Wayne Reynolds’s Australian Dictionary of Biography entry was published online in 2016 and in Volume 19 in 2021. The separately authored 1991 newspaper obituary reproduced by Obituaries Australia is a different source. An earlier draft of this file supplied only 2021 after rejecting 2014, and incorrectly described the two texts as the same.
• 7 November 2020: Michael Hand, Nugan Hand Bank co-founder, dies in Idaho Falls, Idaho under the name “Michael Jon Fuller”, having fled Australia in June 1980 on a forged passport. He was located there in November 2015 by Australia’s 60 Minutes, working from Peter Butt’s book Merchants of Menace: The True Story of the Nugan Hand Bank Scandal (2015) (Wikipedia; ProPublica).
• November 2025: Gerry Karidis still alive and styled Chairman of Karidis Corporation; Neos Kosmos feature 25 Nov 2025.

Direct answers to the Wikipedia talk-page questions

Q1 — Pre- and post-Loans story. Pre-1974 he was a Sindhi-diaspora textile importer, briefly with K. Chellaram (London), then a failed company director in Glasgow (Castle Manufacturing from 1956, later a trading name of T. Hassaram & Co Ltd, which was compulsorily wound up in 1964 and still in liquidation in 1987; The Australian’s reported claim of a personal Scottish bankruptcy in 1964 remains unresolved, distinct from the documented company winding-up) and in London (74–76 Old Compton Street; bankrupt 1971). In 1964 he was a prosecution witness in a Glasgow insurance-fraud trial over a 1959 warehouse fire. (A Manchester firm, Khemlani & Co Ltd, wound up insolvent in 1968, was run by a “W. Khemlani” and may not have been his.) From around 1973–74 manager of Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) Ltd, London — the £100-capital shell with a confusingly similar name to the genuine Sindhi family firm. Post-1975 he resurfaced in Hong Kong (~1976/77), Adelaide (Oct 1977), Singapore (Nov 1977 UK-passport renewal), the Cayman Islands as Odyssey Trading Corporation (1978–80) running large alleged-money-laundering proposals through Nugan Hand, then Haiti (from 1977, on the evidence of the passport) as ONACORA’s commercial-financial manager / “ambassador” for Duvalier, then New York jail and FBI cooperation (1980–81). Reappeared in Hong Kong March 1983 trying to broker an Arab rescue for EDA via Macwell International — “laughed out of Hong Kong”. Retired to Paisley with Sarah and died there 19 May 1991. The 1982 notice naming a director “T. Khemlani” does not establish that Tirath held that post; an earlier draft treated it as part of his later career.

Q2 — Nugan Hand and BCCI. Nugan Hand is documented in detail by Marian Wilkinson’s 15 Nov 1985 National Times article (from documents held by Charles Murphy in New Jersey): client of Nugan Hand from at least August 1978; Odyssey Trading Corporation, Grand Cayman; Sept 1978 four-project proposal endorsed by Michael Hand; “Project Olives”; telexes to Graeme Steer. Wilkinson presented the connection as previously undisclosed and discussed destruction of bank records. Her report does not, by itself, establish every investigative step taken by the Stewart Royal Commission. Even Kwitny’s Crimes of Patriots (1987), the fullest US account of Nugan Hand, yielded no Khemlani match in the July 2026 text search; OCR and search limitations apply. No open-source documentary link between Khemlani and BCCI has surfaced. An earlier draft of this file called the BCCI connection plausible from shared geography and timing. Those coincidences do not establish a business relationship.

Q3 — Moscow Narodny Bank. It features centrally in the second phase of the affair, late January to early March 1975. The Attorney-General’s Department’s seven-part file on the loan is titled “Proposed borrowing of $2,000 million through Moscow Narodny Bank of London Mr Khemlani” (NAA A432, A1975/484, parts 1–7, read in October 2026 together with the Harders papers). The bank, the Soviet-owned Moscow Narodny Bank Ltd of the City of London, was to be the channel for the January 1975 borrowing, not the lender. - Opened by Khemlani on 8 January 1975. The day after the December authority was revoked, Dolmac Consultants of Tehran wrote to “Tirathdas Hassaram Esq.” at Dalamal under the reference “DiksMac/Aus/C20/Cas5”, the reference the bank later used to Connor. The letter recorded an agreement that he would “assign to us exclusively for deposit in our bank all the original documents … showing that you are already authorised to negotiate a loan for the country identified in such documents”. In return Dolmac would raise “approximately $US 4,000,000,000” over 20 years at 8.35 per cent, “a total payback of: $US 19,890,000,000”. Khemlani’s power of attorney addressed to “Mr. C.O. Dicks, General Manager”, Moscow Narodny Bank, 24–32 King William Street, says he “deposited the related documents at your bank on the 8th January 1975”. It describes him as holder of British passport G621722 and “authorized person of the lenders”, and appoints a Rotterdam lawyer, Albert Walter Bokma, and Cranendonk to collect and pay out the commissions (NAA A1209, 1975/2400 part 1, pp.250–252 and 261). - Introduced to Connor by Khemlani. His telex of 10 January 1975 told Connor and Karidis that “Moscow Norandy Bank is working all out and their manager Mr Dicks is doing his utmost”. On 16 January “Dr. Aboudi Kosta” told Connor by telephone that the money had been “mobilised into the Moscow Narodny Bank” (A432, A1975/484 part 7, pp.108 and 119). Connor’s telex of 25 January expected “confirmation of funds” from the bank, and his office telexed the bank directly on 29 January (part 4, pp.18 and 33). - Named at the outset of the second authority. On 27 January 1975 Wheeler told the Attorney-General’s Department that Connor was seeking Executive Council authority “for a borrowing of $1000 million through Moscow Narodny Bank, London” (Rose’s statement, NAA M4081, 1/40, p.45). The draft acceptance Connor settled with Rose’s help that week made the bank’s General Manager the certifier that the money was available. When Rose asked whether the bank had a General Manager, Connor produced pages of the Bankers’ Almanac naming C.O. Dicks (Rose memo of 11 June 1975, A432, A1975/484 part 2, pp.36–37; the Almanac pages are in part 1, pp.205–211). - How the contact was made. On 28 January Dalamal (Alan Crawford) gave an associate of L. MacDonald of Dolmac Consultants the telex number and code for the bank’s first telex to Connor (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.11). - The telexes. The bank’s telex of 30 January asked Connor to confirm a borrowing of $4,000 million. Connor offered terms for up to $2,000 million on 31 January. On 7 February he sent an acceptance for up to $2,000 million, written after “Mr. Tirathdas Hassaram Khemlani’s visit to your bank of 3 February” and with Khemlani “present whilst the contents of this are being drafted” (part 3, pp.56–59). On 27 February a telex signed “Dicks, General Manager, Moscow Narodny Bank London” asked Connor to confirm that Australia would receive “4,000 million US-dollars on the conditions previously agreed in your telex of 7/2/75”, under Swiss rather than English law. On that confirmation the bank “will be in a position to accept funds on your behalf”. Connor replied that night asking “whether you have had an offer of such funds for lending to us” and for “information relating to source of funds”. On 28 February he suspended consideration of any offers for six banking days (A432, A1975/484 part 3, pp.55–62; part 4, pp.34–39). The reference code on every message, “AG / MME + AE / 420 / DSCLL / KHEM / 30011975”, was set by Dalamal. Allan Crawford sent it on Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) letterhead on 28 January to “Mr. Richard Denempont, 87 Brewer Street, London W1”, annotated as working “with Macdonald on certain transactions in London”. He named “the Telex to be sent tomorrow from Moscow Narodny, London” and Connor’s telex number (part 4, p.32). On 9 July 1975 Connor told Whitlam he had “no documents evidencing earlier messages as between myself and the Moscow Narodny Bank of London, prior to the message of the 30th January” (part 6, p.35). Menadue flagged “the series of six telex messages between 30 January 1975 and 28 February 1975 with the Moscow Narodny Bank” for Whitlam on 9 July 1975, before Connor tabled them (part 3, pp.7–9). - The Dolmac papers. MacDonald’s Dolmac letter of 28 January 1975 to a Geneva adviser, Dr M.G. Ako, claimed an exclusive Australian mandate. It cited a discussion “at the Moscow Narodny Bank (King William Street, London)”. A Dicks letter of 29 January to an Antwerp firm offered a 1 per cent commission. A bank telex of 4 February 1975 to the Banque Générale du Luxembourg confirmed a loan of US$4,347,205,374 over 20 years. Lynch produced all three in Parliament on 10–11 June 1975. MacDonald told the press he banked with Moscow Narodny and knew Dicks, and the bank’s London staff would not comment (press clippings filed in part 2). - What is not shown. None of the papers read shows the bank putting up money of its own or confirming that third-party funds existed. Its telexes make it a would-be receiving and certifying bank for “our client’s” money, which never arrived.

An earlier draft of this file said Moscow Narodny “does not feature”, relying on the 87-page “Khemlani documents”, Marian Wilkinson’s Nugan Hand material and NAA Fact Sheet 239, whose summary title omits the bank. The other banks in the story are UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland, which denied any knowledge of the funds or of Khemlani), Seattle First National Bank (Switzerland), the Overseas Development Bank (Geneva) and Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd (the reference letter and the £7,500 undertaking).

Q4 — Why arrested and then released in 1980–81? He was accused of moving US$1m–$2m of stolen money orders (the loot from a theft reported by the Chicago Citizens National Bank on 5 April 1977) out of the US into Singapore. His arrest was reported by October 1980 and was probably early that year, rather than in 1981 as the ADB has it (see “Dating the arrest, bail and indictment”). Toohey and Wilkinson report that after his FBI arrest he cooperated with investigators: “agreed to be ‘wired up’ by police in a sting operation to track down the men behind the theft”, and the published account describes (i) bail of US$250,000 was met with $500,000 surety from four US citizens (two of whom the FBI itself regarded as agents of the New Jersey Mafia family — per Freney 1985), (ii) on prosecution motion the two major indictments were dropped, bail was “exonerated”, travel limits were “extended to the world”, (iii) he pleaded to misprision of a felony (Kenneth Kaplan, attorney), and (iv) he received a US$500 fine + 3-year suspended sentence in a Brooklyn court on 22 June 1981. ADB shorthand is “convicted but immediately pardoned”; that conflicts with the detailed reporting of a guilty plea and sentence. No pardon instrument has been located, and the actual judgment has not been read. The principal published source is Brian Toohey’s reporting in the National Times, 16–22 August 1981, reprinted in Tribune Sydney 19 Aug 1981 p.7.

Q5 — Ghana, Sierra Leone, Haiti. Haiti is well documented: ONACORA director / “Special Assistant to President Duvalier” / “roving ambassador (retired)”; brokered (unsuccessfully) concessional Kuwaiti/Iraqi/Libyan crude for refinement-and-resale-to-US-petroleum-companies in 1979 (State Dept cables 1979PORTA04879 / 1979STATE265362 / 1979KUWAIT04943; Rooted in Secrecy (1982), p.40). Freney dates the Haitian role to 1977. The reported passport issue date of 15 June 1977 does not independently establish when that employment began. Sierra Leone is documented circumstantially: passport issued 25 February 1977; Khemlani’s own 1983 Hong Kong sales pitch listed “the Republic of Angola and Sierra Leone” as governments he had raised “substantial sums of money” for (SMH 24 March 1983). Ghana is referenced in Wilkinson 1985 — “the conman used the same modus operandi on companies and other governments around the world, including Ghana, Sierra Leone and Haiti” — but the specific transactions and how he obtained that passport are not detailed in any open source I could find. An earlier draft of this file inferred a passport-for-sale arrangement. The cited records do not establish how he obtained the passports, their diplomatic status, or any payment for them.

Q6 — Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, UK, US. - Pakistan: birthplace (Sindh) only; no documented adult activity. - UK: Glasgow / Paisley 1950–c.1969 (37 Stonefield Drive, Paisley; T. Hassaram & Co Ltd, in liquidation 1964–87); possibly Manchester (Khemlani & Co Ltd, wound up 1968, but signed for by a “W. Khemlani”); London (74–76 Old Compton Street W.1 and 50 Popes Lane W.5) 1969–74, then 8 West Eaton Place SW1 as Dalamal’s commodities-division front 1974–75 (plus the disputed “basement of a Bulgarian tavern” walk-up office); the 1982 Manchester directorship remains an unconfirmed identity match; Paisley retirement → death 19 May 1991. - Singapore: corporate base for Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) deal-making; the Thomas Simson & Co Ltd warning was published in Singapore 24 May 1974; UK passport renewed in Singapore 1 Nov 1977; Nugan Hand meetings August 1978; daughter Shanti director of Labrador Drilling & Engineering (Singapore) Pte Ltd 1987. - Hong Kong: intermediary network (Thomas Yu was the Hong Kong end of the introduction to Connor); resurfaced there 1977 (“Khemlani resurfaces — in Hong Kong” headline); 1983 EDA / Macwell International / Barclays Asia episode. - US: New Jersey (Charles Murphy’s home, 1979–80; the suitcases of documents); New York / Brooklyn arrest, prosecution and sentencing 1980–81; Chicago money orders; an unverified Pittsburgh lead (a people-search entry at 2045 Murdstone Road, Upper St. Clair; see “The Pittsburgh address”), with no established bail-period address.

Q7: Johnson Matthey reference and Coward Chance checks. The official files read in October 2026 largely settle this. Drover’s telex of 11 November 1974 survives (NAA A432, A1975/484 part 1, p.11; quoted under that date). Johnson Matthey’s letter of introduction of 6 November 1974 has not been seen. An earlier draft of this file presented the checks’ scope and the reason they failed as settled. - What the check covered. Drover asked Johnson Matthey’s P.J.C. Firth, who vouched for Khemlani as “the hard-working manager” of “Dalamal and Sons (Commodity) Ltd”. The substance of Firth’s reference concerned the old, wealthy Dalamal family firm under “Mr. Gopu Dalamal”, not the £100 commodities company Khemlani managed. Firth disclaimed any knowledge of the money-raising. - Coward Chance / Charles Drover: Drover wrote to Hewitt about Khemlani on 11 November 1974. At Hewitt’s instigation he checked the bona fides of Dalamal with P. Firth of Johnson Matthey that November (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.1; A1209, 1975/3168, p.19). As Connor reported it to ministers on 21 December 1974, Drover, “who acted for some lesser Arab rulers”, found Khemlani “in good repute and well-known” and “of considerable substance” in an old and well-respected firm; Phillips answered that the firm had a capital of £100 (NAA M4081, 1/29). The papers describe a check on Dalamal made with its own bank. None of the papers read shows Coward Chance checking Khemlani personally. The reported 5 December London meeting has not been substantiated by the AIM Network page cited in an earlier draft. - Johnson Matthey Bankers Ltd: the bank’s own account is in a letter of 27 October 1975 from its director P.J.C. Firth to Drover. Its connection “amounted only to our normal banker’s courtesy in giving Dalamals a letter of introduction for their manager”, followed by “a minor commitment”: the £7,500 undertaking of 27 May 1975 (NAA A1209, 1975/3168, pp.21–22). Firth also said Johnson Matthey were acting “for Dalamal as principals” and, under banker-client confidentiality, needed Dalamal’s consent before saying more. The ADB describes the reference as identifying Khemlani as manager of Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) Ltd and endorsing the company’s standing (Reynolds). That fits an introduction letter of this kind, but the letter itself has not been seen. - Scotland Yard: Treasury’s own unauthorised check reported on 13 December 1974 that Scotland Yard “had failed to uncover any criminal record” (Larkin statement, NAA M4081, 1/15). A criminal-record check would not show the 1971 bankruptcy. - The 1971 English bankruptcy and 1964 company liquidation were gazetted under Hassaram. The existence of these records does not establish that an alias caused official checks to fail, that no check was made under Hassaram, or that the May 1974 Singapore warning went unread. An earlier draft answered the alias question “yes” without evidence for that causal explanation. - Independent third party: (Sir) James Wolfensohn, then London-based investment banker (later President of the World Bank), was asked by Whitlam himself for advice and concluded Khemlani “sounded like a con man” (per ADB). In Wolfensohn’s own memoir A Global Life: My Journey Among Rich and Poor, from Sydney to Wall Street to the World Bank (PublicAffairs, 2010) p.168: “I spent a couple of days trying to talk Whitlam out of working with him and departed feeling very pleased with myself, believing I had succeeded.”

Q8 — Other names. See the table at the top. Material additions in this version: the EDNY indictment reportedly listed three aliases on 29 February 1980, according to Toohey and Wilkinson (Tirath Hassaram Khemlani / Peter Khemlani / Tirathdas Hassaram); Wheeler’s working nicknames were “funny-money man” and “carpet-bagger”; the FBI FOIA-log subject is “KHEMLANI, TIROTH” (an internal misspelling).

Q9 — Where did the money for international travel come from? Unresolved. Khemlani’s statement on leaving Australia on 16 October 1975 said he paid his own expenses (AAP, Post-Courier, 17 October, p.6, via Trove). That self-report should be set alongside the later funding allegations, not treated as proof either way. Two published allegations put a figure on outside support: - Laurie Oakes, Crash Through or Crash (1976) p.135: US$250,000 from “two multinational and two Australian-owned companies” — paid for Khemlani to “co-operate with the Liberals” (i.e. release the incriminating documents in October 1975). Lionel Bowen in the House on 6 May 1976 referred to a Queensland knight without naming him; the identification as Sir William Gunn is Freney’s, not Bowen’s. - Brian Toohey, National Times 16–22 August 1981 (quoted by Freney 1985 pp.9–10): “Khemlani had been paid US$400,000 by a private US company to reveal the information that precipitated the ‘supply crisis’ in 1975” — sourced to “a well-placed National Country Party source.” Khemlani’s New York lawyer Kenneth Kaplan refused to make him available for interview. An earlier snippet-only research note attributes a sharper version to Toohey’s Secret: The Making of Australia’s Security State (MUP, 2019), p.169; the full passage remains unchecked: his “well-placed Coalition source” said the CIA laundered the US$400,000 through an American mining company to pay Khemlani to come to Australia and release the documents, but would not say how he knew it was CIA money rather than the company’s own. (Toohey there dates the arrival to 14 October 1975; the Canberra Times of 11 October shows Khemlani landed on 10 October.) The same Toohey article placed a draft telex sent to Fraser in October 1975 in a Hawaiian hotel room, with coding instructions referring to a Honolulu phone number that “The National Times has called … It was the Hawaiian headquarters of the CIA in 1975.”

• Khemlani’s own counter-claim (October 1975). He told Peter Game that “an unknown source” had offered him US$500,000, then US$1 million, “to give his version of the loan affair”, and that he refused (Melbourne Herald wire copy, NAA A432, A1975/484 part 6, p.252). This is his self-report, made days before he released his documents, and it sits awkwardly beside the Oakes and Toohey allegations above.
• Official records on costs, 1974–75. At the Reserve Bank meeting of 21 December 1974 Cairns asked “where Mr K could be getting the money to meet his costs”. Connor answered that Khemlani was domiciled in the United Kingdom and, according to Drover, a man of substance (NAA M4081, 1/29). On 6 March 1975 Hewitt wrote to Qantas “authorizing phone charges” for Khemlani to Hewitt’s own personal account (NAA M4081, 1/12, p.17). The summary does not say how much was charged or whether Hewitt was reimbursed. In October 1975 Crawford put the group’s expenses at “well over $100,000” (Canberra Times, 11 October 1975, p.1).

Marian Wilkinson (1985) puts the wider question plainly: “Usually the victims were putting up the money themselves for this costly exercise although in the case of Connor it is still unclear who paid for Khemlani’s expensive and drawn out international game. One thing that is certain from Khemlani’s modus operandi, he rarely picked up the tab.” An earlier draft of this file supplied Nugan Hand fees, an ONACORA salary and later FBI or Haitian payments as answers. No payment record or cited source here establishes those income streams. His business relationships are leads to investigate, not proof of who met his travel costs. For 1974–75 itself, the candidates are (a) commission-hopeful intermediaries (Cranendonk / Yu / Shelley / Karidis), (b) the Mercantile Bank and Trust Co of Freeport, Bahamas (a CIA front established by Col. Paul Helliwell — WSJ 17 Feb 1981; its letter of intent of 28 April 1975 for US$19.89 billion of Australian promissory notes is in the official file, see late April 1975, but that shows a role in the paper trail, not payments to Khemlani), (c) one or more rival arms-dealing groups around Commerce International / Edwards-Ohlsson, (d) the un-named US company of Toohey’s 1981 piece — none documented in primary sources.

Adjacent affair — the “Iraqi Breakfast” (Dec 1975 – 1976)

Book of Leaks explicitly cross-references this story to Khemlani’s later New York friends (p.74: “the so-called Iraqi Breakfast affair … becomes even more bizarre”). Worth summarising as it is now indirectly part of Khemlani’s biography. (For a fuller bibliography see Bramston, Quadrant March 2016; Rodney Tiffen, Pearls and Irritations Sept 2025; Suzanne Rutland, AJHS Journal 22(2) 2015; Philip Dorling, Narooma News reprint 2012.)

• Henri (“Henry John”) Fischer: also used the names Ken Wilson and D. Staples (per the 4 April 1995 LSF news brief, williscarto.com). “French-Australian” (Suzanne Rutland calls him a “Scarf employee from 1972–1975, working as a trouble-shooter for Australian trade in the Middle East”). Lived in flat at Blues Point Tower, McMahons Point, Sydney.
• From 11 November 1975: Book of Leaks p.75: Bill Hartley approached Sydney clothier Reuben F. Scarf “immediately after the Whitlam Government was sacked on November 11, 1975, to seek donations from the Middle East”; Scarf’s employee Henry Fischer “was assigned to go to the Middle East to search for funds”. (Same page, in passing: “A Fischer neighbour in the Blues Point Tower building was the publisher Rupert Murdoch.”)
• 16 November 1975: Whitlam and David Combe call on Fischer at his Blues Point Tower flat (in some accounts the meeting was on the margins of the 16 Nov ALP National Executive). Fischer agrees to act as Labor’s Middle-East emissary.
• Late November 1975: Fischer flies to Baghdad; meets senior Iraqi ministers (per his account, including Saddam Hussein).
• 10 December 1975: Breakfast meeting at Fischer’s Blues Point Tower flat with Whitlam, Combe and two Iraqi officials (Book of Leaks p.75 lists the Australians present as “Whitlam, Combe and Fischer”; Bill Hartley — the channel’s instigator — is placed at the breakfast in some later accounts but not in Book of Leaks) — later identified by US-intelligence intercepts as Farouk Al Jezirah Yeeyah (Yahya) and Ghafil Jassem Al-Tikriti (Iraqi Mukhabarat / nephew of Saddam, per the CIA’s own Tikriti-clan paper CIA-RDP88T00096R000400540002-8). The Iraqis allegedly promise US$500,000 in election funds, to be handed over in Hong Kong/Tokyo. Fischer’s three explicit asks (per his own later sworn statement, AJHS Journal 2015): (i) a more even-handed Middle East policy; (ii) intelligence-sharing on Middle East affairs; (iii) “assurance that Bob Hawke would not become Labor Party leader.” Book of Leaks p.70 (not p.74 as an earlier draft had) explains the signals intelligence: the intercepts — “Umbra” being “the code word for signals intelligence” — “occurred in Japan, and involved reports sent from the Iraqi Embassy there to Iraq”; they were not recordings of the breakfast itself; “the two diplomats … along with the funds intermediary Henry Fischer, went directly from Sydney to Tokyo”; and per the same US sources the “diplomats” were “in fact, members of the Iraqi Secret Service”. Separately, p.74 records the claim that one of Fischer’s partners bugged the breakfast itself.
• 13 December 1975: Federal election; Labor loses. The US$500,000 never arrives.
• 17 February 1976: Fischer phones Rupert Murdoch in London from Paris.
• 20 February 1976: Fischer arrives in London and gives Murdoch a 40-page sworn statement in Murdoch’s London offices; a London-based ASIO officer sits in on the interviews (Book of Leaks p.75).
• 25 February 1976: Laurie Oakes (Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial) “broke the Iraqi story on February 25”; “when early wind of Oakes’ report appeared”, Murdoch (writing under “Special Correspondent”) rushed The Australian’s own version — “Iraq promises $US500,000 to pay Labor’s debts / Whitlam in secret Arab election deal” — into the same day’s paper, “based on information given him by Fischer eight days earlier” (Book of Leaks p.75). Tiffen (2025) adds that Fraser’s office tipped Murdoch that Oakes’s story was coming. An earlier draft of this file had Murdoch “eight days ahead of” Oakes — an inversion of the Book of Leaks sentence: the eight days refer to when Fischer briefed Murdoch, and the two papers published simultaneously.
• Post-election, 1976: Book of Leaks p.75: Fischer’s 40-page London statement “contained a number of wild claims” which the new Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, later made to three journalists in background briefings in his Canberra office — e.g. that the $500,000 had actually been handed over at the 10 December meeting, and that Whitlam had promised to provide sensitive information on Israel to Iraq. “There is no evidence, however, that Whitlam made any promises; nor did he get any money.”
• 26 February 1976: US Embassy Canberra reports the story in cable 1976CANBER01477.
• 27 February 1976: Whitlam tells US Ambassador Hargrove privately that he expects to be ousted “within a week” and confirms awareness of the Coombe/Hartley Iraqi-funding attempt (cable 1976CANBER01553, SECRET) — see WikiLeaks PlusD section.
• 3 March 1976: HoR Hansard p. 472–4: Killen, Peacock, Abel/Ellicott exchange on Fischer’s police-protection request from Singapore and the Reuben Scarf breakfast.
• March 1976 onwards: Murdoch puts Fischer under the protection of bodyguard Douglas Sinclair.
• Singapore Hilton, c.1976: Fischer disappears from his hotel room in the company of one Tito Howard (“known to do dirty work for Arab dictators”); Sinclair tells the Age’s Singapore correspondent Michael Richardson he had been knocked out. Howard later contacts Murdoch in London offering a video of “an Australian politician engaging in a major indiscretion”; Murdoch declines.
• Los Angeles Superior Court, c.1979–80s: A sworn statement (cited Book of Leaks p.74 but no docket number given) records that the Iraqis did provide US$500,000 and that Fischer disappeared with the money. (The major California case in which Fischer is later a named defendant is Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc. v. Willis Carto, Henry Fischer, Vibet, Inc., Liberty Lobby, Inc. — Case N64584 in the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego, Dept 11, Hon. Runston G. Maino, trial Oct 1996, judgment US$6,430,000 — but that case post-dates Book of Leaks.)
• Later: Fischer settles in California (Pine Heights Way, northern San Diego County, fortified estate) and becomes active in far-right politics (Willis Carto / Liberty Lobby / Institute for Historical Review orbit); David Greason in Australia/Israel Review 15–28 June 1994 was the first to disclose this. Fischer was a named defendant in Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc. v. Willis Carto, Henry Fischer, Vibet, Inc., Liberty Lobby, Inc. — Case N64584, Superior Court of California, County of San Diego, Dept 11, Hon. Runston G. Maino — trial October–November 1996, judgment US$6,430,000 for plaintiff. Book of Leaks concludes: “other sources strongly suggest that Fischer may have been an intelligence agent working for the US Government.”
• Life status unresolved: a later article’s use of the present tense is not evidence that Fischer was alive when it was published. An earlier draft of this file inferred a 2025–26 life status and age from that wording. Neither has been established.

The bearing on Khemlani: Toohey & Wilkinson argue (p.74) that the same US$ paid to Khemlani in 1975 (the US$400,000 from “a private US company”) and the US$500,000 promised to Whitlam via Fischer were both early-active operations of the same intelligence-financial network — the question being who, exactly. Their tentative answer points to the Commerce International / Task Force 157 / CIA Helliwell-Mercantile-Bank complex that surfaces again in the 1985 Marian Wilkinson Nugan Hand investigation.

Khemlani in Hansard and broadcast sources, 1975–1986

From a Historic Hansard sweep (282 fragment hits for “Khemlani” 1975–80) the most substantive debates are these. Full URLs at historichansard.net.

• 11 June 1975 Senate: Sen. Guilfoyle on Dolmac Consultants / Khemlani.
• 12 June 1975 Senate: first substantive debate; Jessop: “Who is Mr Khemlani? Where are his headquarters?”
• 9 July 1975 HoR (special sitting) — Connor tables papers naming “Mr Tirath Hassaram Khemlani, Manager, Dalamal & Sons (Commodities) Ltd, 8 West Eaton Place”.
• 9 July 1975 Senate: President’s statement re Khemlani introduction.
• 17 July 1975 Senate: Sen. Young: “Mr Karidis and no doubt through to Mr Khemlani in London”.
• 22 July 1975 Senate: Senate Select Committee hearings; Sen. Hall: “Did Mr Karidis or Mr Khemlani press the Government for funds?”
• 2 September 1975 HoR: Whitlam’s written answers to Lynch’s Questions on Notice 2939–2943 (an earlier draft of this file mislabelled this day “Connor’s resignation day”): Q2939 asks whether Connor “held discussions with Mr Tirath Khemlani in Sydney on 22 March 1975” and whether a second US$4 billion (US$8 billion cumulative) was flagged — Whitlam’s answer points to Connor’s letter of 22 March 1975 to Khemlani (Hansard, 9 July 1975, p.3622); Q2943 concerns Khemlani’s arrangements for disbursing a US$180m commission, citing a letter of 27 December 1974 signed by Khemlani; another answer denies Connor signed promissory notes or knew the Württembergische Bank.
• 9 October 1975 Senate / HoR: Withers, Wriedt, J. McClelland; Anthony, Katter.
• 14 October 1975 HoR: Sinclair: “whether he has ever met Mr Khemlani. If so, where and when?” — Whitlam: “Mr Speaker, no.” (p.2035; the basis of the oft-quoted “I have never met Mr Khemlani”). Anthony presses on the statutory declaration; Whitlam explains accepting Connor’s resignation (telexes delivered by Messrs Con and Corr, published in the Melbourne Herald).
• 15 October 1975 HoR: Whitlam rules out a royal commission; Khemlani “may consider that he has some cause of action”; Garland’s question on notice re the “October initiatives through Mr Michael Murphy” and any Khemlani/Harris connection.
• 16 October 1975 Senate: Wood, Wriedt (“As far as the Government is concerned, Mr Khemlani does not exist any more”), Carrick (Bank of Paris / Bank of India telex 1 Sept), Georges (Melbourne Herald exclusive).
• 21 October 1975 Senate: Greenwood: Karidis intermediary; Khemlani as “scout for money”; “the 13 Dec 1974 Exec Council minute”.
• 22 October 1975 HoR: Whitlam denies Tim Anderson contact, references Karidis/Anderson; Lynch on the “Khemlani and Phillip Cairns files”.
• 28 October 1975 HoR: Whitlam: “many contacts with increasing frequency”; Fraser: “Forget all these loans; say goodbye to Mr Khemlani”.
• 28 October 1975 Senate: President’s letter from Lynch re Khemlani Senate appearance; Everett: immigration without visa; James McClelland (Immigration Minister): New York attorneys’ Friday-night visa inquiry, “the usual transit facilities … another 72 hours”, “the Opposition’s client”.
• 29 October 1975 Senate / HoR: Douglas McClelland: the Opposition’s holding notice means it will not call Khemlani to the Bar; James McClelland: “the orchestration of the previous arrival of Mr Khemlani … a fizzer”; Wriedt; Hayden: “star performer”. McIntosh: “another Petrov. It has fallen flat.” Also on 29 October, Steele Hall incorporated in Hansard a letter on what “purports to be the letterhead of the Union Bank of Switzerland” (its Melbourne representative office), dated 3 June 1975 and addressed to Lynch’s aide Andrew Hay, which speaks of enclosing “the complete Kemlhani dossier” [sic] and of service to “Mr Lynch and Sir Frederick”. Hall told the Senate “I do not believe it is a genuine letter”, and called a set of telexes he also tabled “bogus telex messages” (Senate Hansard, 29 October 1975; revisited by Tribune, 1 October 1980, p.7, Trove 259474987).
• 30 October 1975 Senate: Wriedt: “a gentleman by the name of Khemlani who has all the evidence to damn”; Carrick; Chaney; Gietzelt: “all its eggs into the Khemlani basket”; Sim; Georges (call before chamber); Primmer; Everett; Hall.
• 4 November 1975 Senate: Major debate after Lynch produced eight briefcases of Khemlani documents in Sydney 13 Oct.
• 5 November 1975 Senate, pp. 1741-62: Wheeldon: extensive — Khemlani’s photocopied passport, statutory declaration on Connor meetings, midnight office procedure.
• 6 November 1975 Senate: Wriedt on Karidis contradiction of stat dec.
• 11 November 1975 (Dismissal day) HoR: Fraser: “his agent, his intermediary, the person who was good enough to pursue $4,000m for this Government for 12 months”; Frank Crean (not Whitlam): “the issue is not about the unholy relic, Khemlani”.
• 23 March 1976 Senate: Keeffe: Bjelke-Petersen / Wiley Fancher private inquiry into the Khemlani loans affair costing >$250,000.
• 6 May 1976 HoR: Lionel Bowen: Khemlani’s money “from a knight in Queensland … a source very close to the Country Party” (Gunn, per Freney’s identification — Bowen never utters the name); Lynch’s “slush funds”, Licardy’s and Andrew Hay’s bills; calls for a royal commission into who paid Khemlani.
• 8 November 1977 Senate: Steele Hall on Gateway Motel; Withers’s “old potato chips and monkey nuts” reply.
• 31 May 1979 HoR: Blewett, “Iraqi breakfast”.
• 10 October 1979 Senate: Messner, Carrick, D. McClelland: full Khemlani retrospect.
• 7 November 1979 Senate: Walsh: “poring over Khemlani’s suitcases in Sydney on or about 13 October 1975”.
• 16 September 1980 HoR, p. 1291: Fraser: “Mr Tirath Khemlani could be given some kind of roving commission.”

The earlier search located few substantial later references; it does not establish that none exist. Three leads:

• 9 September 1981, House of Representatives: Frank O’Keefe (Paterson), in the budget debate (speech beginning p.1098), referred to recent reports of Khemlani’s financial troubles in the United States and elsewhere. His description of Khemlani as “an Arab” was inaccurate rhetoric, not biographical evidence. He supplied no court particulars or source (official Hansard fragment 0100).
• 26 October 1982, House of Representatives: Ben Humphreys recalled Armitage’s “mini-Khemlani” label in a debate about Wild Duck Island development advertising. This is another later political analogy, not an episode in Tirath’s business career (official Hansard, speech beginning p.2526).
• 13 September 1984, Senate: Don Grimes discussed the acquisition of the Khemlani and Crawford statutory declarations (ParlInfo chamber/hansards/1984-09-13/0043; saved excerpt, checked in the earlier pass).
• 9 November 1986, ABC Radio Sunday: the reported Peter Bowers comments about Andrew Hay and Brian Buckley remain an unchecked transcript lead in this pass.

US State Department cables on WikiLeaks PlusD

≈20 declassified cables, listed chronologically. Khemlani-direct cables are bolded.

Also indexed at archive.org as State-Dept-cable-1975-145926, State-Dept-cable-1975-287367, State-Dept-cable-1975-294807, StateDeptcable1977-203932.

NAA file series — Loans Affair

From NAA Fact Sheet 239:

Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet - A1209, 1975/1237 part 1: Overseas loan raisings – Khemlani arrangements (11 files) - A1209, 1975/2253 — Papers from Min. of Minerals and Energy obtained 29 Oct 1975 - A1209, 1975/2400 part 1 — Khemlani statutory declaration of 3 November 1975 (3 files) - A1209, 1975/2494 part 1 — Middle East loan offer (8 files) - A1209, 1975/2525–2529 — Communications between Mr Connor / Sir Lenox Hewitt and Mr Khemlani – 14 November 1974 to 6 January 1975 (5 files) - A8446, 5 — Overseas loans raising – documentation from Minerals and Energy - A8446, 18 — Confidential – overseas loans

Attorney-General’s Department - A432, A1975/484 part 1 — Proposed borrowing of $2000 million through Mr Khemlani (7 files) - A432, A1975/7850 — Connor file - A432, A1975/7851 — Sir Lenox Hewitt file

Treasury - A571, 1975/96 part 1 — Middle East loan offer to Department of Minerals and Energy (10 files) - A571, 1975/3944 part 1 — Overseas loans – transactions – funny money – Senate resolution (2 files)

Federal Executive Council - A1573, 1974/9 — Minute papers approved 1974 (includes the 13 Dec 1974 minute) - A1573, 1975/8 — Minute papers approved 1975

Clyde Cameron personal papers - M3865, 167: The loans affair – affidavit regarding Khemlani (7 files) - M3865, 177 — The loans affair – regarding Cairns and Harris

Jim Cairns personal papers - M1567, Box 1/4 — Correspondence between Dr J F Cairns and Mr George Harris

Sir Clarence Harders (Secretary, A-G’s Dept) personal papers — the most underused set: - M4081, 1/1 — borrowing for ‘temporary purposes’ advice - M4081, 1/6 — A-G’s Dept involvement in Khemlani negotiations - M4081, 1/10 — request to Dept of Minerals and Energy - M4081, 1/12 — summary of Connor/Khemlani correspondence - M4081, 1/15: Loans affair – investigations – enquiries to Scotland Yard (6 pages, digitised; read October 2026. It holds J.T. Larkin’s statement of 23 May 1975 and Harders’s letter to Menadue of 12 June 1975; see 13 December 1974) - M4081, 1/28 — proposals to include overseas loan raising on Loans Council agenda - M4081, 1/29 — interdepartmental discussions re Khemlani negotiations

For Khemlani’s personal ASIO file, search RecordSearch under “Khemlani” / “Hassaram” / “Tirathdas” in series A6119, A8911, A12389. The contemporary report of notification to ASIO concerns a 1980 arrest. It does not establish when a personal file was opened, or that there was one.

September 2026 check (RecordSearch blocks automated access, so this used Tim Sherratt’s GLAM Workbench copies of NAA data: closed-file lists for 2016–2022, the full A6119 item list of April 2021, and weekly digitisation logs):

• Digitisation reported in a March 2025 dataset; live access not checked in this pass: M4081, 1/40 (Harders papers), “Loans Affair – Statements – C W Harders, A C C Menzies and D J Rose (Attorney General’s Department) regarding circumstances surrounding Executive Council meeting, 13 December 1974”, January–June 1976, barcode 5450363. It was on the closed list in 2016 and was digitised on 21 March 2025. D.J. Rose is the officer whose Sankey evidence places Khemlani at the 7 December 1974 Sydney meeting.
• Absence from the closed-file datasets checked in the earlier pass does not establish that every Fact Sheet 239 item is open or requestable; whether each is “open” or still “not yet examined” (awaiting an access decision) has to be checked on RecordSearch by hand.
• No matching title was reported in the earlier searches of A6119, A6122 and A6126 datasets from 2018–21. This pass has not reproduced those searches. An earlier draft of this file converted that negative result into a claim that no item exists; catalogue coverage, withheld titles and aliases prevent that conclusion. Whether ASIO holds anything under another title can only be asked through the NAA’s intelligence-records inquiry form.
• By contrast, ASIO does hold files on Henry John Louis Fischer (“aka Henry Jean”), probably the Henri Fischer of the Iraqi Breakfast affair: see “Archival collections” below.

RecordSearch keyword check, 1 October 2026 (RecordSearch works in an ordinary browser session): “Khemlani” returns 139 items and “Hassaram” 14; “Tirathdas” returns none. Every match is from 1974 or later, so the NAA holds nothing on him from the war years under these names. Items worth knowing beyond the Fact Sheet 239 list:

• A446, 1975/35276, “HASSARAM, Tirath” (Department of Immigration correspondence file, 1975; “Not yet examined”). Filed under his patronymic, it does not appear in a “Khemlani” search. Probably his visa and entry file from the October 1975 visits; immigration files of this kind usually hold passport particulars and background checks. The single most promising unread Australian file.
• A432, A1975/484, parts 1–7, titled “Proposed borrowing of $2,000 million through Moscow Narodny Bank of London Mr Khemlani” (the catalogue spells the bank “Naroont” in six of the seven parts; Fact Sheet 239 shortens the title and omits the bank). See Q3.
• M3865, 174 (Clyde Cameron’s papers), “The Loans Affair – Khemlani’s credentials” (1974); M4081, 1/3 (Harders), “Advice – Financial liability to Tiraty Khemlani”.
• Fraser’s personal papers: transcripts of a “T Khemlani news interview (20 Oct 1975)”, the day of the prisoner-of-war denial (M1363, 8 and 13; M1360, 14; also M1268, 309 part 2). Mostly “Not yet examined”.
• ABC television (series C475 and C100): This Day Tonight segments “Mr Khemlani” (28 October 1975) and “Who is Khemlani?” (29 October 1975), Four Corners “Khemlani Interview” (6 December 1975), “Khemlani Leaves”, and a Newsvoice interview with Senator Withers about him.
• B579, three press photographs, “Khemlani, Tirath – Pakistani loan dealer” (The Age); M2149, 10, the Crawford–Khemlani statutory declaration as published by the Senate; C5740 (Reserve Bank exchange-control files on the “Khemlani/Cairns Affair”, 1975–76, “Not yet examined”); AA1976/60, 143, “Press Statements – Khemlani – Transit Facilities 27 October 1975”.

Archival collections (manuscripts), found September 2026

None of these is cited in the published literature on Khemlani as far as we know. All were identified from catalogue records; none has yet been read.

Additional press route: ANU Archives Series 387. The newspaper-cuttings microfiche collection, 1952–1992, has an open reference set including the Australian Financial Review, Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Australian, Canberra Times and National Times. Check constitutional-crisis and personalities headings and annual supplements for 1980–81. This is a verified collection-level lead; no particular Khemlani cutting in it has been located.

Open research leads, with effort and cost (September 2026)

“Your time” is a rough planning estimate, not a measured task duration. Fees below are posted service rates where a current official source was checked; they are not quotations for these requests. Archival survival, copying permission and case-specific delivery times must be confirmed. An earlier draft of this file presented several agency averages and retention rules as predictions. No requests or purchases were made during this review.

Initial searches and readily accessible leads

Records and copying services

Longer shots and slower routes

United States

Closed papers, reading rooms and research questions

Notes on individual leads

The EDNY file and the four sureties. Start with the docket and ask whether any case papers, including an appearance bond, survive. An earlier draft of this file said non-trial criminal files from this period were destroyed after 20 years. The current judiciary schedule, pp.3–5, distinguishes several categories: paper non-trial cases with sentences of 15 years or less normally have a 15-year retention period; historically valuable files, ordinary docket sheets and case indexes can be permanent. Neither this schedule nor an older rule establishes the actual disposition of Khemlani’s case. Request the transfer or destruction record if the file cannot be found. The bond may identify sureties, but its contents have not been read.

Wooldridge identity unresolved. The published account names M.L. Wooldridge of Richmond, Virginia as a surety. A name match is not proof that a candidate was the surety: that needs a court record or contemporary report connecting the full name to this case. The candidate research below (restored at Richard Bean’s request, 30 September 2026, after the fifth pass had removed it) is a lead on those terms.

Wooldridge candidate (11 July 2026 sweep): the only “M(elvin) L. Wooldridge” with Richmond, Virginia records in Ancestry’s indexes is Melvin Lee Wooldridge (3 Dec 1929 Campbell County, Va. – 22 Oct 2003 Bedford County, Va.): Richmond city-directory listings 1956 and 1959; Korean-era draft card (Lynchburg; relative “O.A.” = father Allen Oscar Wooldridge, 1891–1968); 1950 census household Lynchburg City ED 112-51 sheet 72 (father a molder and brother-in-law a coremaker in an iron foundry; Melvin then a teenager, no occupation); married Jane McConnehey Hubbard, 17 Apr 1954, Front Royal; Find a Grave memorial 153845690. Nothing found yet shows his adult occupation, a Richmond residence in 1981, or the means to pledge US$500,000 of assets: the identification is plausible but unproven. To settle it: the 1956/1959 directory images (occupation and wife’s initial; a “(Jane)” would confirm that the directory entries are this Melvin, though not, by itself, that he was the surety), the 2003 Virginia death certificate (occupation/informant), Richmond directories 1960–1990, and a Richmond Times-Dispatch search. Beware a moneyed namesake: “M.L. Wooldridge” (with Jamie Wooldridge) of Carrollton, Missouri, controlling shareholder of First Carrollton Bancshares / First National Bank of Carrollton (Change in Bank Control Act notices, 52 FR 34302, 10 Sept 1987): the right wealth profile but the wrong state, no known Khemlani link, and Toohey printed “of Richmond, Virginia” after actually interviewing his man; also the huge historic Wooldridge clan of Chesterfield County (suburban Richmond) means initial-only listings could hide other candidates.

Useful primary and secondary sources

Primary records

• TNA HO 334/871/35287 — naturalisation cert 12 Apr 1961.

• London Gazette — Issue 45518, 11 November 1971, p.12293 (bankruptcy petition/receiving order; the adjudication and later notices ran in subsequent issues); issues 45522 (16 Nov 1971) and 45544 (14 Dec 1971) for the receiving and adjudication orders; 2 and 26 July 1968 and 21 May 1971 (Khemlani & Co Ltd, Manchester, signed by “W. Khemlani”); 17 Nov / 10 Dec 1982 (K B & Co Ltd / T. Khemlani Director); Gobind Dalamal deed poll, 5 May 1970, p.5098; Minories Finance petition against Dalamal & Sons (London) Ltd, 30 June 1987, p.8373; Gobind Dalamal’s bankruptcy, 4 Nov 1993, p.17737, and discharge, 15 Jan 1997, p.581.

• Edinburgh Gazette — T. Hassaram & Co Ltd notices 1964–87: winding-up petition 25 Feb 1964 (issue 18222, p.122), order 20 Mar 1964 (18229, p.177), “also trading in the name of The Castle Manufacturing Company” 10 Apr 1964 (18235, p.228), receiving-order reprint 19 Nov 1971 (19045, p.926), Rankin application 13 Jan 1987 (22074, p.58) and appointment 31 Mar 1987 (22118, p.477).

• Evening Times (Glasgow), 11 May 1964; Glasgow Herald, 12 May 1964 (Vaughan/fire case).

• New Straits Times (Singapore), 24 May 1974 — Thomas Simson & Co Ltd notice.

• The Age, 23 May 1975, p.1 — “I gave loan letter: Connor”.

• The Age, 18 June 1976, p.6 — “Khemlani on move again in dollar chase” (Ben Hills).

• Canberra Times, 14 Feb 1976, p.5 — “London writ against Khemlani”.

• Canberra Times, 13 Sep 1991, p.1 — “Tirath Khemlani dead at 70” (Trove 122383735).

• The Age, 13 Sep 1991 — “Whitlam’s Nemesis, Khemlani, Is Dead”.

• Canberra Times, 7 Aug 1994 — John Farquharson, “OBITUARY: Sir Frederick Wheeler” (Trove 118260996).

• Tribune (Sydney), 19 Aug 1981, p.7 — “Khemlani admits Mafia link” (Toohey) (Trove 259979432).

• Added September 2026, all via Trove: Canberra Times 11 Oct 1975 p.1, “Loan middleman alleges gag on ‘full facts’” (arrival 10 Oct 1975; 110662209); Canberra Times 8 Jul 1977 p.3, “Lynch tells of big loan offers” (Licardy letter; 110853754); Canberra Times 19 May 1976 p.7, “Lawyer tells of loans affair” (Peter Foulkes; 131818221); Canberra Times 1 Feb 1979 p.1, “Minister disagreed with loan advice, court told” (Sankey hearing, D.J. Rose’s evidence; 136977869); Canberra Times 17 Feb 1979 pp.1, 13 (Sankey charges dismissed); Papua New Guinea Post-Courier 20 Jun 1980 p.4 (“Shades of Khemlani”; 250599242); Tribune 1 Oct 1980 p.7, “Swiss bank featured in Walker and loans affairs” (259474987); Tribune 29 Oct 1980 p.3, “Khemlani’s $1 million ‘mafia money’” (digest of Toohey’s AFR report; the key source for re-dating the bail to 1980; 259475704); Canberra Times 25 Nov 1981 p.1 (126860587); Canberra Times 18 Oct 1985 p.8 (132372393); Canberra Times 11 Nov 1985 p.1 (Hay/Buckley “mole” claim; 127536637); Canberra Times 7 Jan 1987 p.1 (Des Moore; 119473622); Canberra Times 13 Sep 1991 p.2, “Death brought barely a murmur” (122383816).

• Parliamentary Library press-clippings index (ParlInfo; titles and dates are public, texts are not): AFR 10 Oct 1980, “Five years on Khemlani resurfaces in US court”; National Times 16 Aug 1981, “Khemlani squeals on mafia mates”, and 30 Aug 1981, “Our secret arms deals”; National Times 14 Nov 1982, “The Loans Affair tapes”; Age 24 Mar 1983, “Khemlani still in the loans game”; Australian 1 Feb 1984, “Khemlani loan a sad loss, says Young”; SMH 19 Apr 1984, “Khemlani figure buried” (who was buried is not yet known); the 2–5 Oct 1985 cluster on a 1983 revival attempt; Bulletin 12 Nov 1985, “The case of the kangaroo con man and his victims”; National Times 15 Nov 1985, “The money trail: a players’ guide”; Australian 1 Dec 1989; SMH 13 Sep 1991, “The man who helped bring down Whitlam”.

• Bill Hayden, speeches of 19 Oct 1979 (Economic Society, Victorian Branch) and 9 Nov 1979 (Melbourne Chamber of Commerce), ParlInfo HPR10021367, HPR10021374.

• Senate Hansard, 29 October 1975 — Steele Hall’s purported Union Bank of Switzerland letter to Andrew Hay (historichansard.net).

• Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: property assessment file (via the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center) and the Recorder of Deeds’ free online index, cited only to describe the house at 2045 Murdstone Road. They are not evidence of a surety or of Khemlani’s residence; that needs a contemporary court document or published report.

• Hansard, House of Representatives & Senate, 1975–80 — selected list above.

• US State Dept cables on WikiLeaks PlusD — full list above.

• NAA file series A1209, A1573, A432, A571, A8446, M3865, M1567, M4081 — listed above.

• UK Companies House — K B (Import & Export) Limited 01490164.

• Anthony Paul, “The Sobering Story of Australia’s Big Spending”, Reader’s Digest, January 1977, reprinted by Elford A. Cederberg, Congressional Record, 13 January 1977, vol.123, pp.1113–1114 (official PDF). Primary evidence of publication and political use, not a primary record of the loan negotiations.

• AAP, “Khemlani: I’m sorry”, Papua New Guinea Post-Courier, 17 October 1975, p.6 (Trove). Contemporary statements about departure, commission, expenses and bankruptcy.

• James Cunningham, “Khemlani denies report he is undischarged bankrupt”, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 1975, p.12 (scan). Read from page image in the fifth pass.

Secondary works

• Toohey, Brian & Wilkinson, Marian. The Book of Leaks: Exposes in Defence of the Public’s Right to Know. Angus & Robertson, 1987. ISBN 9780207155086. Pages 70–75 are a principal journalistic source for the EDNY prosecution detail; they quote records that have not themselves been obtained.
• Wilkinson, Marian. “Khemlani link with Nugan Hand.” The National Times, 15–21 November 1985, pp. 20 & 22 — first disclosure of the Cayman / Odyssey Trading / Project Olives material.
• Freney, Denis. Get Gough! How the CIA & Rupert Murdoch overthrew Gough Whitlam. Tribune (special), October 1985. Ch. 2 “The Khemlani Affair”, pp. 5–11. Full text archive.org.
• Kwitny, Jonathan. The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA. W. W. Norton, 1987. Borrow-only on archive.org. (Full-text check, July 2026: the searched text yielded no Khemlani or surety match. This negative search does not prove that every spelling and passage was covered.)
• Kwitny, Jonathan. “The Great Dingo Hunt.” Mother Jones, Feb–Mar 1984, vol. 9 no. 2, p.67.
• Kwitny, Jonathan. “The CIA’s Hidden Hand in Down Under.” Foreign Policy, No.49, Winter 1982–83, p.199.
• Whitlam, Gough. The Truth of the Matter. Penguin 1979 (p.222); revised 1983 (p.230); revised 2005.
• Sexton, Michael. Illusions of Power: The Fate of a Reform Government. Allen & Unwin, 1979, 305 pp. Library catalogue. An earlier draft of this file cited p.334, which falls outside this edition. The commission figures formerly attached to that citation remain unverified.
• Kelly, Paul. The Dismissal. Angus & Robertson, 1983 — reissue of The Unmaking of Gough (1976). p.374.
• Pilger, John. A Secret Country. Jonathan Cape 1989 / Knopf 1990 — pp. 156–158 / p.346.
• Page, Bruce. The Murdoch Archipelago. Simon & Schuster, 2003.
• Hocking, Jenny. Gough Whitlam: His Time. Miegunyah Press, 2012 — Vol. 2, pp. 363–4 (Iraqi affair) and Loans Affair chapter.
• Uren, Tom. Straight Left. Random House, 1995 — pp. 236–7.
• Souter, Gavin. Acts of Parliament: A Narrative History of the Senate and House of Representatives, Commonwealth of Australia. Melbourne University Press, 1988, p.714 — Wheeler/Whitlam dialogue. (Corrected attribution; an earlier draft listed this under “Bowen, Lionel”, a book that does not exist.)
• Oakes, Laurie. Crash Through or Crash. 1976, p.135 — alleged US$250,000 payment.
• Gordon, Harry. An Eyewitness History of Australia. Penguin, 1988, p.510 — reprints Peter Game’s Khemlani interview.
• Bolton, Geoffrey. Oxford History of Australia, Vol. 5, p.374.
• Bell, Coral. Dependent Ally, p.250 — the “K1/K2/K3” Treasury naming convention.
• Megalogenis, George. The Australian Moment: How We Were Made for These Times. 2012. Publisher record. An earlier draft of this file attributed the book to Shaun Carney; its p.67 reference remains unverified.
• Coxsedge, Joan, Coldicutt, Ken & Harant, Gerry. Rooted in Secrecy: The Clandestine Element in Australian Politics. Committee for the Abolition of Political Police, 1982 — pp. 40, 237, 262.
• Karidis, Gerry (with Brian Abbey). Building, Always Building: The Life and Times of Gerry Karidis, AM. Wakefield Press, 2012. ISBN 9781862549678.
• For the Hewitt strand: the Canberra Times obituary “Sir Lenox Hewitt was a mandarin respected and feared by leaders” (2020) and the People Australia entry for Sir Cyrus Lenox (Len) Hewitt (1917–2020). (An earlier draft of this file listed “Ian Hancock, National Treasure: The Spies & Bureaucrats of Sir Cyrus Lenox Hewitt” — no such book could be verified to exist; Hancock’s actual biographies are of Gorton, Greiner, Hughes and Gotto. Removed.)
• Reynolds, Wayne. “Khemlani, Tirath Hassaram (1920–1991)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, online 2016, Volume 19 (2021). Separately: the unsigned Canberra Times obituary, 13 September 1991, p.1, reproduced by Obituaries Australia.
• Wolfensohn, James D. A Global Life: My Journey Among Rich and Poor, from Sydney to Wall Street to the World Bank. PublicAffairs, 2010. ISBN 9781586482558. p.168 — the “con man” judgement.
• Toohey, Brian. Secret: The Making of Australia’s Security State. Melbourne University Press, 2019, pp.159–60, 168–9 (index: “Khemlani, Tirath”). Repeats the 1981 arrest date; gives the “CIA money through an American mining company” version of the US$400,000 claim (p.169); cites a June 1976 Bulletin piece on ASIO suspicions of CIA involvement (p.168). Seen in Google Books search-inside snippets only.
• Hall, Richard. The Secret State: Australia’s Spy Industry. Cassell, 1978, p.182. Snippet-only lead: the reported assessment of the Honolulu telex has not been checked against the full page.
• The Times (London), 12 October 1983, Australia special report (foreign-investment article): Khemlani “indicted by a federal grand jury in New York for conspiracy in 1980”.
• Lernoux, Penny. “Blood Money”, Penthouse (US), April 1984, reportedly from p.68. Citation and claimed Khemlani passage were supplied by an earlier agent; neither has been independently verified in this pass. Retain as a source to locate, not corroboration.
• Buckley, Brian. Lynched: The Life of Sir Phillip Lynch. 1991. Known here only secondhand: on ABC Four Corners (1 July 1991) David Marr said the book alleges Khemlani reported to the CIA. Buckley was one of Lynch’s aides who worked the Khemlani documents in 1975. Not yet read.
• Lloyd, Clem & Clark, Andrew. Kerr’s King Hit. Cassell Australia, 1976. NLA cat. 2185872. The original print source for the “Sheikh Sikkar Gassan” / Dorchester Hotel claim (pp. 141–2), which is otherwise un-attested.
• Freney, Denis. Get Gough! How the CIA & Rupert Murdoch overthrew Gough Whitlam. Tribune (special), October 1985. Full text on archive.org including a detailed appendix of “loans affair” players.
• Stewart, Donald (Royal Commissioner). Final Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Activities of the Nugan Hand Group. Parliamentary Paper 369/1985. NLA catalogue 2096210. Vol. 2 digitised.
• Bramston, Troy. “The Iraqi Money Scandal, 40 Years On.” Quadrant, March 2016 and follow-up April 2024.
• Tiffen, Rodney. “Rupert Murdoch’s greatest scoop.” Pearls and Irritations, 12 September 2025; republished as “Best of 2025”, 7 January 2026. (Byline verified against the page; an earlier draft of this file credited “Bowman & Stine”.)
• Dorling, Philip. “How Murdoch got his biggest scoop.” The Age / Narooma News, 10 Nov 2012 — reprint.
• Rutland, Suzanne. “Whitlam’s Shifts in Foreign Policy 1972–1975.” AJHS Journal 22(2), 2015.
• Game, Peter. Lifetime profile by John Trevorrow, Melbourne Press Club (2000). And Melbourne Press Club Hall of Fame entry.
• New Dawn Magazine. “Coup d’État in Australia: 20 Years of Cover-Up.” New Dawn.
• AIM Network. “The Anglo-American ambush of the Whitlam Government — 11.11.1975 (Part 2).” theaimn.com.
• CovertAction Magazine (Nov 2023). “New Investigation Exposes CIA Role in 1975 Coup against Australian Government.” covertactionmagazine.com — caution: this source asserts the “Thomas Ho-lung Yu / Flying Tigers / CAT / Civil Air Transport / Spyros Fassoulis” detail (treat with care; corroborate independently).
• ProPublica. “After Disappearing from Australia, a CIA-Linked Fugitive Found in Idaho.” propublica.org — Michael Hand confirmed in Idaho 2015.

Wikipedia history — what already exists, what was removed, where the gaps are

The earlier research pass recorded the following Wikipedia history; revision details and current page state were not independently rechecked in this pass. A standalone article Tirath Khemlani existed from 18 November 2005 (created by user Jack Upland) to 7 July 2009, when it was merged into Loans affair by user Surturz citing WP:BLP1E (notable for one event only). There was no AfD discussion. The merged article ran to ~5.4 KB in 2008; the earlier pass reported a redirect to Loans affair; the current byte count, latest edit and talk-page status remain unchecked here. Content lost in the merge and not restored:

• The US prosecution, including the arrest reported by October 1980 and the 1981 disposition;
• The trans-Australia gas-pipeline rationale for the loan;
• The obscurity period 1981–1991;
• The “Old Rice and Monkey Nuts” nickname (removed by editor Sfaiku on 18 July 2008; also removed from Loans affair by B P Hogan on 1 August 2024).

Wikidata Q48515754 exists for Khemlani (sources only the ADB; no Wikipedia sitelink in any language). Any future standalone article and Wikidata linkage should be checked against the current pages and Wikipedia’s sourcing requirements.

Adjacent Wikipedia coverage as recorded in the earlier pass, not a fresh availability check: - Loans affair — current target of the redirect; ~12.7 KB. - 1975 Australian constitutional crisis — two short paragraphs mention Khemlani. - Nugan Hand Bank — no mention of Khemlani. - Michael Jon Hand — no mention. - Rex Connor — one-sentence mention. - Stewart Royal Commission — no Khemlani mention. - Bill Hartley (activist) — exists; brief mention of Iraqi affair. - William Archer Gunn — exists; confirms 1975 attempted petrodollar borrowing. - Iraqi loans affair / Iraqi money scandal: no Wikipedia article exists (404, no redirect). - Henri Fischer / Henry Fischer: no Wikipedia article exists (the disambig “Henry Fischer” lists five unrelated people). - Gerry Karidis: no Wikipedia article exists. - Reuben Scarf: no Wikipedia article exists (he is briefly mentioned as a 1977 Call-to-Australia Senate candidate).

Reliability and gradient — for a future Wikipedia article