An Australian whisky company executive yesterday said that he has resigned after an “extortion” video reportedly showing him smoking a methamphetamine pipe was published in the national media.
The Australian newspaper released the video on its Web site, showing a shirtless Lark Distilling CEO and managing director Geoff Bainbridge smoking from a glass pipe, while talking about using “meth” and making sexual remarks to an unseen person.
The newspaper Web site warned viewers that the video might be “disturbing or offensive.”
Lark Distilling said that Bainbridge, 50, had resigned with immediate effect from his posts “to allow him to manage a personal matter that was brought to the attention of the board.”
Bainbridge said in a statement that he had resigned after a video showing him engaging in “illicit drug use” had been used to blackmail him for years.
The whisky executive and cofounder of Australian burger chain Grill’d said that the incident took place overseas before he was appointed chief executive officer of the distillery.
“I attended a gathering with people I didn’t know and don’t remember much more about that night,” Bainbridge said.
“However, the next morning I was played footage which made it clear I had been set up as part of a shakedown,” he said.
“Following the incident, due to this captured content, I have been the subject of a sophisticated, continuing and recently escalated extortion,” he added.
Bainbridge said that he initially paid his extortionists, but stopped based on the advice of a threat assessment consultant in London.
“This resulted in video imagery being released to several media outlets,” he said.
“I’m a victim of extortion, but that wouldn’t have occurred without my poor judgement,” Bainbridge said. “I am deeply remorseful for my own actions.”
In an interview from Los Angeles with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, Bainbridge said that in December 2015, he awoke in an unfamiliar apartment while visiting a country in Southeast Asia for a business meeting.
At the apartment, he was confronted by two men with the explicit video and quickly made the first of a string of payments to avoid public exposure.
The executive told the newspapers that he had met a woman in a bar after a day of meetings and visited her apartment, where another couple was already present.
They drank more and shared a joint, he reportedly said, but added that his memory of events after that was unclear.
Bainbridge confirmed that he was the man in the video, but told the newspapers that he was not a methamphetamine user.
Bainbridge said he did not know how he came to have the drug in the video.
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