Former FAI MD and HIH director Rodney Adler has joined his old HIH colleague Ray Williams in telling all. Mr Williams chose the Australian Financial Review’s magazine several weeks ago to tell how he believes he could have done more to save HIH if he had been allowed to. Now Mr Adler has chosen the mainstream magazine The Bulletin to tell his story.

Mr Adler told the magazine he feels singled for attention, and vows he will go through years of court action to clear his name, saying even if he fails he wishes above all to “lose with integrity”.

Mr Adler is bemused by the media attention he has received since HIH’s collapse in 2001. “You’ve read the articles in the past 18 months! It’s shocking what people have said about me,” he said. “It’s duck season and I’m the duck and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Vehemently rejecting comparisons between himself and Christopher Skase, Mr Adler says the media has gone too far in trying to portray him as a ruthless criminal. He says he’s not a flight risk, and rather than “running away from risk” he’s choosing to “stay and fight”.

“Why would someone compare me to Christopher Skase? How could they? Skase stole money!” he said. “In the whole three volumes from the royal commission [into HIH’s collapse] there is not one reference to me stealing money.”

Mr Adler doesn’t see how he can get a fair trial in Australia, and points out that his legal problems haven’t left his family unscathed.

Until the legal actions he is involved in are concluded, Mr Adler demands that he be regarded as “innocent until proven guilty”. But he says he will “pay the price” and “respect the system” if he’s convicted of the charges he faces over dealing in HIH shares.