Palmer fronts court over Qld Nickel
EMBATTLED businessman Clive Palmer is in the midst of a nine-week trial over the collapse of Queensland Nickel.
The mining magnate is fighting a Federal Government lawsuit against him and his nephew and former company managing director Clive Mensink over the liquidation of his Townsville nickel refinery, which left hundreds without a job.
Government-appointed liquidators of Qld Nickel brought the former federal MP to the Brisbane Supreme Court to recoup about $300m for creditors.
Mr Palmer had requested taxpayer-funded assistance from the Queensland Government in late 2015 to guarantee a loan of $35m for planned redundancies at the refinery, but the Government denied the request, citing the refusal of the company to share full details of its large donations to Palmer’s Palmer United Party.
Despite its financial troubles, Qld Nickel donated more than $20m to the PAP in two years.
After terminating the employment of more than 230 employees in 2016, the company blamed poor nickel prices, which were at a 12-year low, and the refusal of the Qld Government to support industry and jobs in North Queensland.
The liquidators’ 280-page claim, first lodged in the court in June 2017, names 21 defendants, including Mr Mensink and a string of Mr Palmer’s companies.
The liquidators’ task includes trying to recover almost $70m in taxpayer funds used to cover unpaid entitlements to about 800 workers sacked from the refinery.
Mr Palmer, who at times represented himself during the trial, has fought stubbornly to have the claim dismissed over the past two years, having described it as baseless and a desperate politically motivated attack by the government.
In May, Mr Palmer had a win in court when WA’s Court of Appeal unanimously denied the Chinese state-owned conglomerate CITIC’s appeal of paying $14.50/t from its Sino Iron project to one of the tycoon’s other companies, Mineralogy.
CITIC built the project on a land owned by Mineralogy, with both parties disputing the payment of royalties.
Mineralogy and CITIC originally agreed to base payments on the annual benchmark iron ore price, which was changed to base royalties on the iron ore spot price after a Supreme Court ruling in 2017, forcing CITIC to front up US$149.4 million in back-payments.
“During these five years, CITIC continually just took the ore. Those funds not paid at that time to Mineralogy would have been used to keep Queensland Nickel open and 3000 jobs in North Queensland would not have been lost,’’ Mr Palmer said.