A man admitting the shares his investors bought were a crock. A man happy to give media interviews afterwards, as long as he was asked how he and his family were coping with daily threats of intimidation, portraying him as a kind of victim and avoiding the central question of the fraud. Behind the sensational evidence, however, is another narrative, one rife with even further intrigue and allegations of wrongdoing. It is a largely hidden history that raises new questions about Firepower's taxpayer-financed, federal government-sponsored rise and underscores the ineffectiveness of the corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, when presented with something so complex. In 1992 Johnston, a Jehovah's Witness who sometimes preached door to door, had started with an improbable goal: He would make a fortune selling nothing more than a concept. It was a magic pill that cut emission and made fuel last longer.

First he would persuade investors that he had such a product. Then he would convince them that proof of its success was not necessary. Later, in order to win over the sceptical, he would use investors' money to sponsor their favourite sporting teams. This had the added advantage of attracting further investment. The strategy succeeded spectacularly. By late 2006, after almost 14 years of modest progress both in Australia and in New Zealand, where he first started out, and despite his lies being exposed many times, reputable people were tipping him for greatness. Many believed Johnston was about to radically confront the biggest emergency facing humankind - the global energy crisis. Some of Australia's brightest business leaders figured him to be the new Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of the world's biggest company, Microsoft. The message to potential investors was clear: get on board or lose out on the chance of a lifetime. It was easy to see the attraction. Federal statistics reveal there is nearly one truck or car for every man, woman and child in Australia, devouring more than 36.3 billion litres of pet- rol and diesel each year. Johnston's little magic pill and a series of related products promised to cut this multibillion-dollar annual bill by 20 per cent in one easy stroke. Moreover, he claimed the pill would virtually eliminate all of the poisonous gases emitted by each vehicle. That was just Australia. Johnston boasted that Firepower would conquer the world.

Johnston surrounded himself with substantial people. His business partners included Gordon Hill, a former West Australian police minister. There was Warren Anderson, one of the country's best-known property developers, and Grigory Luchansky, a Russian oligarch who regularly featured in newspaper stories around the world. The then governor-general, Major-General Michael Jeffery, the former Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh and the then Queensland premier Peter Beattie were among those who turned up for Firepower-sponsored events. Bill Moss, the former Macquarie Bank director, was scheduled to be the company's new chairman, and Firepower's chief executive officer was John Finnin, one of Australia's most senior public servants. Johnston told shareholders they were going to be rich when he listed his company on a London stock exchange. Leading the investment scramble was Mark Ricciuto, the captain of the Adelaide Crows Australian rules football team, and Wayne Carey, the former all-Australian captain. There was the Australian high commissioner to Pakistan, Zorica McCarthy and the head of the Australian Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, doctors, accountants, public servants, media figures and mum-and-dad speculators - in the end, more than 1300 of them.

Firepower shoved past giant corporations to become the single biggest sporting sponsor in the land. Its name was brashly displayed in boxing rings, on racecourses, on racing cars, on motorbikes - even on surfboards. Money was thrown at the Western Force Super 14 team and at household names such as the Wallaby star Matt Giteau. Johnston began sponsoring the Sydney Kings, Australia's best-known basketball team, and ended up buying the franchise. He started socialising with Russell Crowe, the Oscar-winning actor, and Peter Holmes a Court, one of Australia's best-known businessmen. The two men owned the iconic South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby league team. Firepower had just become one of the team's leading sponsors. Johnston's sporting portfolio was scattered across the world and even in those heady days, Firepower appeared too good to be true. So good that rumours sprang up that it was really a money-laundering front for the Russian mafia, or a product of the KGB or the CIA. The reasons were never quite clear. In any case, nobody seemed to care as long as the money flowed. And flow it did. But Firepower was never a company in the ordinary sense of the word. It had no trucks or factories. Its products were difficult to purchase. Though it claimed to be a multi-billion dollar global corporation it had little more than a handful of bewildered employees in a cheap industrial estate in Perth and a couple of low-level technicians in Romania and Singapore. However from as early as 2003, Austrade had teamed up with Firepower, allowing it to use Australian embassies and the private residences of ambassadors to promote its merits.

Though Firepower made little and sold little, Austrade handed over $394,009 in export grants and devoted a special section on its website to Firepower, endorsing it as an export success in Russia. Johnston toured Australia with senior Austrade officials, including its chief economist Tim Harcourt, lecturing other businesses on the intricacies of success. Very soon Johnston had moved into a $16 million mansion in Perth and Firepower was enjoying the same diplomatic status around the world as Australia's largest company, BHP Billiton. ? ? ? Johnston didn't hang around to watch his empire crumble. By late 2007 he had skipped Australia, taking up residence in a $10,000-a-week rented apartment in the upmarket London suburb of Mayfair. His downstairs neighbour was the actor Dustin Hoffman. He split his time between there and a luxury mansion he had bought in Bali, telling anyone who would listen that he was hard at work on the long-promised stockmarket listing. Warren Anderson, the prominent property developer and occasional Firepower director, had lined up a series of meetings with London financial institutions, including the giant Japanese-owed Nomura bank. At one of the presentations, John- ston turned up with Leonid Tyagachev, the president of the Russian Olympic Committee and close friend of the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin.

Sources told the Herald that Tyagachev invested $US1 million in Firepower shortly after Johnston promised to sponsor the Russian Olympic team. Tyagachev declined to comment. But back home, the wheels had begun to fall off from as early as January 8, 2007, when the Herald published the first of what would be more than 60 articles that, step by step, exposed the Firepower deceit. There was a further blow in August when it was revealed that its chief executive, John Finnin, faced child sex offences. Finnin had once held a top-secret security clearance from the federal government and would eventually go to jail after being found guilty on 23 charges. He had been under investigation over similar allegations while at his previous employer, Austrade, but had been quietly allowed to resign as head of trade for Europe, the Middle East and Africa to take up his new $500,000-a-year job with Firepower. Finnin was nailed largely on evidence from the federal police, who secretly continued to investigate him after he resigned from Austrade. A taskforce with 24-hour surveillance was set up in an empty unit opposite Finnin's luxurious Melbourne apartment. In this way, police literally watched part of the Firepower saga unfold, but the focus was elsewhere.

Incredibly, the cash continued to pour in - more than $26 million of it. Most came from one new investor, the Perth mining magnate Ross Graham. But Graham soon found that Johnston owed money everywhere - to landlords, to distributors and to his high-profile sporting franchises, many of which were denying publicly that they were owed anything. Documents recently obtained by the Herald from London show that when ASIC finally moved against the company in the Federal Court - in July 2008 - Johnston was living the high life, staying in a $442-a-night room in the Marriott Hotel in London. On a trip to Germany and Dubai, a single dinner cost $1,356. ASIC's civil action in the Federal Court targeted others, too. It included a number of companies associated with Anderson, the developer, Gordon Hill, the former WA police minister and Les Stein, Firepower's corporate counsel. Stein is a close friend of the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Julie Bishop. By coincidence, as the science minister in the former government, Bishop had arranged for Johnston to attend two intimate dinners with the then prime minister, John Howard, at the Lodge, his official residence in Canberra. Bishop says she did it because Johnston was a constituent but Johnston used the meetings to tell potential investors he was advising the Australian government on climate change. Firepower was put into liquidation. So, too, was his basketball team, the Sydney Kings. Without the Kings, the national basketball competition collapsed. About $40 million of private legal actions sprang up against lawyers, financial advisers, banks and other institutions associated with the sale of Firepower shares.

Far from being worried, Johnston continued to live large in London. He started a new company called Green Power Corporation, which had the same logos and the same fraudulent product as Firepower. His new business partner was Frank Timis, a Romanian-Australian who had twice been convicted in Western Australia for heroin possession. Timis is no stranger to colourful characters. In 2003, one of his business associates was arrested by Dutch police on suspicion of being involved in laundering $US250 million for a Colombian drug cartel. The man arrested was a senior adviser to the then head of NATO and a former officer in the Dutch intelligence service. More recently, one of Timis's business associates was Lord Truscott, one of two Labour peers facing suspension from the British House of Lords - the first since 1642 - after a report found them guilty of offering to help amend legislation in exchange for payments. Few people expected Johnston to return to Australia. ASIC, caught by surprise, scrambled to seize his passport. Not for fraud, but on a technicality. It quickly became clear that, even after three years of investigation, the corporate regulator had done little and was playing for time. Few people expected Johnston to return to Australia. ASIC, caught by surprise, scrambled to seize his passport. Not for fraud, but on a technicality. It quickly became clear that, even after three years of investigation, the corporate regulator had done little and was playing for time. Firepower's liquidator moved faster. Johnston was ordered to appear in the Federal Court for a public examination of the company's collapse. The WA Premier, Colin Barnett, compared his behaviour to that of the infamous fugitive Christopher Skase, saying he needed to be accountable.

But Johnston, who had moved into his wife's $3 million Gold Coast mansion, failed to appear in court, sending an email with medical certificates that said he had a heart condition and could not travel. Finally, under the threat of arrest, Johnston arrived in court in December - a ghostly figure who later admitted shareholders had bought shares in a British Virgin Islands-registered entity that owned nothing. Then he turned the attention away from himself, claiming he and his family were victims of daily intimidation from unnamed criminal elements. Anderson, he claimed, had used the Sydney underworld identity Tom Domican and a senior Coffin Cheaters bikie, Howard Wignall, to intimidate him into paying $11 million of shareholder funds into Anderson's private family company. He also alleged Stein, a former chief counsel of the Sydney Metropolitan Strategy, had made $6 million from selling shares he was not entitled to.

Then last week came further sensation. Anderson had supposedly organised the kidnapping of an accountant who had refused to relinquish ownership of the intellectual rights to Firepower's controversial additives. Criminals had "placed him in the boot of the vehicle, took him somewhere and he was told to dig his own grave". But the chilling recollection came as news to the accountant himself, Trevor Nairn. ''It didn't happen, it just didn't happen," Nairn told reporters. Anderson also vehemently denied all of the allegations made about him in court. He told the Herald that Johnston was simply delusional. Loading That will come as no surprise to Firepower shareholders who await the hearing's resumption, at a date to be fixed. gryle@smh.com.au