KEY POINTS:
An Australian cricket great has turned out to be one of the key people behind the Bridgecorp saga.
Craig McDermott, a fearsome fast bowler for Australia, has been named by Australian media as the property developer who owes A$18 million to the capital raising arm of Bridgecorp.
The company collapsed owing investors about $500 million but is in turn owed money from developments.
The Sydney Morning Herald revealed this morning that McDermott, a property developer in Queensland for 10 years, borrowed money to buy land on the Queensland coast to subdivide and sell off.
He told the Sydney Morning Herald he could repay the money.
The Australian Financial Review also reported this morning that McDermott is one of Bridgecorp's major debtors.
McDermott is due to speak to Bridgecorp's Australian receivers, Ferrier Hodgson, about how he may repay the loan.
Yesterday, Bridgecorp's Australian creditors were told at a meeting that the money owed by the then unnamed developer was key to them getting some money back.
McDermott, nicknamed Billy, was one of Australia's best known cricketers of the 1980s and 90s. He burst onto the scene as a 19-year-old fast bowler in England in 1985 taking 30 wickets in six tests in the Ashes series. But while he battled injury for the rest of his career, he became for a time Australia's leading wicket-taker and premier strike bowler, generating tremendous pace off a classic bowling action.
- NZHERALD STAFF
