ALAN Bond was once a big man in a big country. Now he is a disgraced nobody serving a three-year jail sentence. The 58-year-old businessman was convicted by a jury last Friday on four fraud charges related to the French impressionist painting La Promenade, by Edouard Manet.

They ruled that he had caused Bond Corporation, a public listed company, to miss the opportunity to buy La Promenade cheaply because he wanted the painting for Dallhold, his private company.

He was also found to have provided a fictitious story to directors and auditors to explain why Bond Corporation did not buy the painting.

Bond's action caused Bond Corporation to lose the opportunity to make almost £5 million.

He maintained his innocence throughout the five-week trial and is reported to have looked unmoved as the judge sentenced him on Tuesday.

It was the latest twist in the life of the former high-flying multimillionaire whose empire and business interests once ranged from brewing, wine and spirits, motor vehicles, gold and minerals, telecommunications, mining and exploration, petroleum production to TV and radio.

The original self-made man, Bond formed the Bond Corporation, the vehicle for his rags-to-riches life, in 1967. He was born in west London in 1938, the son of a former miner. He was taken to Australia in 1949 and left school at 15 to become an apprentice sign-writer.

His business career began at 18 when he married a politician's daughter and entered the construction and property industry. By 25, he was a millionaire.

He built his fortune through land, buying up huge tracts of it around Perth. He entered the market at the right time, dividing up the land and selling it off at a generous profit when values were beginning to climb on the back of a post-war housing boom.

At its peak, the Bond Corporation had assets estimated to be worth almost £5 billion. It owned half of Australia's brewing industry - including Castlemaine XXXX and more than half the country's television stations. He had stakes in food and drinks group Allied Lyons, investors M&G and TV-am.

It was accompanied by a flamboyant lifestyle. He had a Boeing 727 jet, two luxury yachts and homes in Perth, Sydney and London.

Former Australian prime minister and close personal friend, Mr Bob Hawke, once described him as "one of the outstanding exports from Pommieland", a reference to his British origins.

That was just after Bond's 1983 America's Cup yachting triumph over the United States' Dennis Conner at Newport, Rhode Island. It was the first time Australia had beaten the Americans to win the cup.

But if Bond was a self-made man he was also the architect of his own destruction. His empire began to unravel a few years later. Although he managed to weather the October 1987 stock market crash, it was his failed attempt to raid Lonrho, headed by Tiny Rowland, which began the downward spiral.

Mr Rowland, who is renowned for his corporate street-fighting abilities, did just that - he fought back vigorously. He ridiculed the Bond Corp, which had built up a 20 per cent stake in Lonrho, and with the aid of a devastating report in 1988 said Bond's empire had a net value of minus Aus$3 billion (£1.47 billion) and he was "technically insolvent".

Bond who had always been secretive about his company's huge debt burden, stoutly defended his company's financial position, but was eventually forced to put its stake up for sale. The Financial Tines estimated that Bond was holding a paper loss of £60 million sterling on the investment.

Later, Barings Securities valued Bond shares at minus 5.65 dollars each and the 1989 Bond Corp accounts showed an Aus$980-million annual loss.

His interests in broadcasting were also entering stormy waters. In April 1989, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal investigated if Bond was a fit person to hold a broadcasting licence. It found he had lied to a tribunal hearing and had threatened to use staff from his TV station against a company resisting him in a takeover battle.

Bond was forced into bankruptcy in 1992, when Bond Corp collapsed with losses of more than £1.5 billion. It was the biggest business failure in Australian history. Bond was declared the world's biggest bankrupt, but managed to maintain his millionaire lifestyle.

The same year he went to jail, having been sentenced to 2 1/2 years after a jury found him guilty of dishonesty over his part in an attempt to rescue the doomed Perth-based merchant bank, Rothwells.

But he served only 90 days before he was released pending a retrial, at which fresh evidence was produced and he was acquitted.

In 1995, Bond was released from bankruptcy after paying £1.5 million to settle outstanding debts of £290 million. He tells friends that he is still involved in deals.

But it was his penchant for art which sent the signals to the rest of the world that all was not well in the Bond Corp camp. By the time he went bankrupt he had built up a stunning art collection said to be worth £75 million.

The centrepiece was Vincent van Gogh's Irises, for which he paid a staggering then world record of £26 million in 1987. not long after the stock market crash.

The purchase stunned the financial community, but at the time it reassured investors of his financial security. I later emerged that he had to ask auctioneers Sotheby's to lend him half the purchase price.

In 1990, Bond fell behind on repayments for Irises, which was sold on to the Getty Museum in California.

La Promenade, the painting at the centre of this week's court case, hung in Bond's chairman's office for five years until 1989.

He was divorced by his wife Eileen "Red" Bond in 1992, after 36 years of marriage. Last April, he married Diana Bliss (40) a theatrical consultant and long-time confidante.

He claims that illness has cut his IQ from 150 to 90, making it difficult for him to remember details of his career and answer police questions.

This adversity may turn out to be fortuitous. Bond is due to return to court next year to face further charges relating to Bond Corp.

Bond Corp shareholders will have no difficulty remembering details of his career the company has unpaid debts of more than £1.5 billion. The shareholders have received nothing.

In the meantime, the former tycoon faces a non-parole period of one year.