Two Mineral Resources board members, including founder and managing director Chris Ellison purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of mining equipment from the company for use at their luxury New Zealand estate at significant discounts to market rates.

Mr Ellison and then-MinRes director Tim Roberts bought the heavy equipment from the company’s PIHA subsidiary in July 2017, according to an invoice obtained by The Australian Financial Review. A separate spreadsheet itemising the machinery shows that the proposed transaction was approved by the company’s then-chairman Peter Wade.