FAI Insurance – the company run by jailed insurance chief Rodney Adler, which is often blamed for bringing down HIH – financed controversial entrepreneur Rene Rivkin’s $4.1 million purchase of a luxury yacht.

During a hearing last week for the trustee in bankruptcy, former Rivkin employee Anthony Warner of insolvency group CRS Warner Sanderson said FAI lent $4.1 million to Mr Rivkin, who spent the money on a 31-metre luxury cruiser he named Dajoshadita.

Mr Rivkin, who already owed FAI Insurance $15 million in the 1990s, was given an additional $4.1 million during the height of the Offset Alpine scandal involving him, former Federal Government cabinet minister Graham Richardson and businessman Trevor Kennedy.

Former Rivkin Group financial controller Margaret Woolveridge told the hearing the loan was eventually paid back, stating there was no liability on the balance sheets.

It has been speculated but not proved that Mr Rivkin used proceeds from his Offset Alpine windfall to repay FAI’s $4.1 million loan.