Clive Palmer case in court: dense legal wrangling with a cast of hundreds 

Big money, big legal teams and a big call to make against a larger-than-life tycoon turned political phenomenon.

But at the end of another round of labyrinthine legal argument, the accusations against Clive Palmer made by his former Chinese business buddies – that he’s a fraud and a liar – were left hanging there unanswered.

And they may never be.

The lawsuit against Palmer again saw scrums of lawyers wheel trolleys with documents metres high into the Brisbane supreme court on Wednesday.

Subsidiaries of Chinese government owned miner Citic Pacific are suing Palmer over $12.1m it paid into a bank account held by his company Mineralogy, ostensibly for the management of a Western Australian port exporting iron ore.

Palmer, double dipping last year, moved that cash out in two transactions that ultimately saw it land in Palmer United party coffers, spent on political campaigns and even an Amex bill.

The case still hinges on whether that was a “breach of trust” over an account mooted strictly for the purpose of running the port, as Citic Pacific claim.

Palmer, who has declined to appear and let his lawyers do the talking, demurs, saying the money was his to do what he wants with, as long as the accounts were reconciled at budget time each year.

Barristers Andrew Bell for Citic Pacific and Simon Couper for Palmer took the court on a deep journey of commercial and contract law.

The acute Justice David Jackson, once a brilliant commercial barrister, kept both men on their toes, citing case law off the top of his head and pinging Bell for repeating himself in different words.

Company go-betweens whispered gravely and passed notes to their legal teams.

Reporters’ heads exploded. Guardian Australia was warned upon entry by an experienced financial journalist of national repute, “you’re a glutton for punishment”.

By afternoon, the bailiff was catching some strategic shuteye.

Bell argued Palmer should have known the money was to be “held in trust” because he knew its purpose – to manage the port – having signed an agreement to that effect.

Couper argued that despite this being a term of that “complex financial document”, it was not at all clear to Palmer that the money wasn’t his to use as he saw fit as the account was not expressly set up as a trust.

“To put it in less formal terms, one has to know that the money which is being used is beneficially held by someone else,” he said, in terms we thought were still pretty formal as things go.

Bell made much of the “sham document” that Palmer created and backdated to claim the money was spent on port services.

“This was a document prepared rapidly and in haste to justify what Mr Palmer knew was not justifiable,” Bell said.

At which point Jackson pulled him up for grandstanding, saying Palmer’s own lawyers had admitted when the document was created and adding: “Why do we have to go down the rabbit hole? That’s non-contested.”

If Jackson does decide the money was held in trust, Citic stand to get their money back without having to prove separately that Palmer was dishonest and acted fraudulently.

While trust remains the sticking point, Couper said Palmer’s legal team did not need to make any submissions on whether their client was a liar and a fraud. Not until the court has dealt with their wildcard defence, that Citic comes with “unclean hands” given Palmer is suing their parent company for $700m in unpaid royalties in WA.

At any rate, the outcome of the Brisbane case will not be known until January at the earliest, when Citic’s lawyers can apply for summary judgement.

Meanwhile, legal proceedings in WA also drag on.

Palmer, in a statement, called the Brisbane case “a witch-hunt and beat-up which is politically motivated and untrue”.

Precisely the same accusations have been coming out of the mouths of senior Queensland government ministers when asked about the Palmer-inspired federal Senate inquiry into their government – but that’s another story.

Source: the guardian – Clive Palmer case in court: dense legal wrangling with a cast of hundreds

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