Palmer’s fugitive nephew found
FUGITIVE company boss Clive Mensink has been found living the high life in Europe with a blonde bombshell girlfriend after spending thousands on a plastic surgeon.
After 20 months on the run, Mr Mensink, 49, was busted by News Corp last week as he left the movies with his glamorous girlfriend Gabriela Konstantinova, close to the apartment they share in an up-market district in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.
The discovery of his safe-house, which has eluded authorities, comes after a year-long investigation by News Corp spanning seven countries and multiple visits to Bulgaria in eastern Europe.
The formerly obese company boss was almost unrecognisable, having shed up to half his body weight and grown a thick beard as he sought to avoid scrutiny over his role in the $300 million collapse of the Queensland Nickel refinery.
Mr Mensink looked horrified and refused to answer News Corp’s questions as he ducked into a pedestrian subway after being approached last week.
Mr Mensink, the nephew of former MP and tycoon Clive Palmer, has been on the run from authorities in Australia since 2016, when the Palmer-owned Queensland Nickel refinery in Townsville, of which Mr Mensink was sole director, went bust and cost almost 800 people their jobs.
His self-imposed exile is funded by his uncle, who the Federal Court in Brisbane heard was paying him $4000 a week from two Palmer-owned companies.
Liquidators PPB, who are chasing the Queensland Nickel money trail, received a tip in September that Mr Mensink, wearing a toupee and having undergone a significant weight loss, had been spotted at an apartment owned by Palmer’s parents-in-law, Alexander and Stilyana Sokolov, who live in the Oborishte district in Sofia.