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Who is saying What, Why, When and Where

Headline:

Decline and fall of a master of the universe

Synopsis:

EVERY morning this week, a frail 65-year-old Japanese businessman has left an apartment on East 79th Street in Manhattan's Upper East Side and made for the subway. There, he has caught the train downtown, to the Federal District courthouse in Lower Manhattan.

Once at the imposing building, he is made to sign in and led into the dock, where he sits alongside his Cuban-American former business partner. They have to listen as, one by one, former clients accuse them of fraud. If found guilty, Gary Tanaka and Alberto Vilar, 67, face up to 20 years in prison.

Meanwhile, in Coombe Hill, in south-west London, there is a 12-year-old-boy who hasn't seen his father for three years. He's Tanaka's son, Alex. “It's heart-breaking for me,” says Gary. “He keeps wondering: What is my father doing that keeps him away all the time?'”

Alex is being cared for by his mother, Tanaka's wife, Renata. She hasn't seen her husband either, ever since he and vilar were arrested, in May 2005, at 10.30 at night in New York, before he boarded a plane back to London, where Tanaka has been living since the Seventies. “They knew I was returning home. They figured it was easier to grab me here in New York rather than try to get me extradited from the UK.”

Publish date:

4 November 2008

Author:

Chris Blackhurst

Source:

Evening Standard

Media:

Access Interview