Palmer’s pick still on panel
Canberra fails lawyer bid
The federal government has failed to remove a lawyer picked by Clive Palmer from an international tribunal that will determine a $41.3bn claim against Australia by the mining magnate.
Australia asked for Swiss lawyer and politician Charles Poncet to be turfed from the tribunal because an Italian court convicted him in 1996 of preparing false documents for a fraudster connected to a secret Masonic lodge and one of the country’s biggest banking scandals.
But because the conviction was later overturned on technical legal grounds, Australia’s bid to have Dr Poncet excluded from the tribunal was thrown out in September.
Dr Poncet was in November booted from a separate panel hearing an unrelated dispute involving a gas company and Iran over negative remarks he made on Swiss television about a woman wearing a “burkini” swimming costume at a sporting event.
Dr Poncet denies doing anything wrong in either case.
The Attorney-General’s Department declined to comment on the burkini ruling but said grounds to challenge arbitrators could differ between cases.
Dr Poncet’s panel will rule on what the department says is an “unsubstantiated” claim by Mr Palmer for compensation over a Queensland coal project that was denied approval.
It is one of three international arbitration fights Mr Palmer has picked with Australia, the biggest of which is a bid for $296bn over the WA government’s decision to stop him getting compensation for an iron ore project it kiboshed.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the government “will vigorously defend Australia’s interests” and work with WA and Queensland as they fight the claims.
International treaties allow offshore investors to take their disputes with the Australian government to private arbitration tribunals rather than take their chances with the court system.
Under arbitration rules each side picks a lawyer to sit on a three-person tribunal. The two lawyers then pick the third member.
Despite being an Australian, Mr Palmer is able to get access to the arbitration system because one of his companies, Zeph Investments, is registered in Singapore. Zeph owns Waratah Coal, which wants to develop a huge coal mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.
But in 2022 the Queensland Land Court ruled the project should not go ahead.
Zeph took its dispute to the Switzerland-based Permanent Court of Arbitration in May last year.
Dr Poncet was convicted in 1996 for “personal aiding and abetting and false testimony” during the trial of a man charged with fraud offences over the collapse of Vaticanowned Banco Ambrosiano.
The ruling was upheld by the Milan Court of Appeal but overturned in 1999 by Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation. Mr Palmer declined to comment.
Bulletin photographer Glenn Hampson, who has been covering the Coast since
1979, shares his favourite moments
A Bikini girl banned from the Surfers Paradise racetrack? Get serious! Believe it or not in 2010 that really happened.
Although the Indy car series had folded and Supercars had now taken over as the main attraction, the Miss Indy competition was still running. I was told to photograph the girls outside the track.
Yes the girls had been locked out.
Bikini girls unwanted at the racing.
How quickly things had turned at the track.
The event that had launched the careers of models Jennifer Hawkins and Kyly Clarke been shunned. It all seemed like some sort of April fool’s joke, but it was October.
It certainly made for a different photo.
The ever changing, always amazing Gold Coast.