Clive Palmer’s nephew Clive Mensink could be brought to account in Australia
A LEGAL loophole could mean Clive Palmer’s fugitive nephew Clive Mensink, who has been hiding in Europe with his glamorous girlfriend, could finally be brought to account in Australia.
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EXCLUSIVE: Clive Mensink may finally be brought to account in Australia, with authorities preparing potential charges against the fugitive businessman which would clear the way for his extradition.
News Corp can reveal a legal path has been identified for getting the runaway nephew of Clive Palmer back to Australia from Europe, where he fled two years ago following the collapse of Mr Palmer’s company Queensland Nickel.
We can also reveal Mr Mensink, who has been hiding out in Bulgaria in Eastern Europe for most of his time on the run, has left Bulgaria — at least temporarily — crossing the border into neighbouring Macedonia earlier this month with two younger local men.
He has avoided two Federal Court arrest warrants in Australia after failing to appear in court for questioning on the collapse of the company, which left 800 people out of work.
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However, in recent weeks authorities have upped the pressure on Mr Mensink with the corporate watchdog ASIC now considering issuing a summons which would compel him to return for questioning. The Section 19 summons contains a coercive power, meaning a failure to respond to it is an offence which carries a jail term of up to two years.
A failure to respond would allow ASIC to issue a criminal warrant for Mr Mensink’s arrest through the Australian Federal Police, and the Attorney-General could then seek his extradition from Bulgaria or whatever jurisdiction he can be located in.
Mr Palmer has also been ordered to appear in the Federal Court in Brisbane on Wednesday for a public hearing, where he will be grilled on what involvement he had with Queensland Nickel at the time it collapsed, with Mr Mensink as its sole director.
ASIC declined to comment to News Corp.
But on October 19, ASIC Commissioner John Price told a Senate inquiry: “ … our investigation into matters around Queensland Nickel and Mr Mensink’s failure to attend (court) and produce books is looking at potential offences around those activities.”
Asked if those offences included criminal offences, Mr Price said: “It’s fair to say that all possibilities are on the table at this stage.’’
Authorities are thought to be looking at whether Mr Mensink allowed Queensland Nickel to trade while insolvent. Their interest in Mr Palmer is whether he acted as a shadow director, controlling the company from behind the scenes, while his nephew was the sole director.
Queensland Nickel also pumped more than $21 million into Mr Palmer’s political party before it collapsed under debts of more than $215 million.
Mr Palmer has family in Bulgaria, and he has been paying his nephew — who News Corp found in Sofia in February — $4000 a week. While he is overseas, he is out of reach of the special purpose liquidators who are attempting to follow the Queensland Nickel money trail. The liquidators refused to comment.
News Corp understands Mr Mensink, 50, has become tired of living in the Eastern European country, and being away from his family in Australia, including his son Ryan Mensink, and his daughter Maddie Brown, a yoga teacher who is returning from London to Australia on November 1.
This is thought to be one of the reasons for Mr Palmer’s bizarre press statement earlier this month that Mr Mensink had been appointed “European director’’ of his project Titanic II, an on-off plan to build a replica of the ill-fated Titanic cruise licence.
Mr Palmer had claimed Mr Mensink would run the project out of its London office but two days later his spokesman admitted there was no office. Mr Palmer then said it would be run out of Paris.
After two years of public examination by the special purpose liquidators, there have been a number of developments in recent weeks which have increased pressure on Mr Mensink and Mr Palmer.
These have included:
*Evidence from George Sokolov, Mr Palmer’s brother-in-law, who told the court that since April 2017, Mr Palmer, and Mr Mensink’s lawyer Sam Iskander, had been able to communicate through him to Mr Mensink. This evidence contradicted earlier evidence from numerous witnesses that Mr Mensink could not be contacted.
*Evidence from Ryan Mensink, Clive Mensink’s son, who told the court he had intentionally destroyed communications between himself and his father because he “didn’t want to handle’’ any extra work as a result of request from the court to produce the records.
*Authorities are also interested in Mr Palmer’s comments to the media last week that he speaks to Mr Mensink “every day.’’ He has previously said, including on July 21 last year outside the Federal Court: “I haven’t had any contact with him.’’
Attorney-General Christian Porter told News Corp that: “As a matter of longstanding practice, the Australian Government does not disclose whether it has made, or intends to make, an extradition request to a foreign country.
“Extradition is also only available in circumstances where a person is wanted to face criminal charges or to serve a sentence in relation to a criminal offence.
“Without talking to any specific proceedings, I would say unequivocally that as a matter of principle Mr Mensink should return to Australia of his own volition to face up to his responsibilities and the people of Queensland.’’
Former Queensland Nickel worker Sam Larkin said it would be ‘’hugely important’’ to her and other ex employees to see Mr Mensink brought back for questioning.
“We’ve been waiting for justice and fairness,” she said.
“We are waiting with bated breath for him to be dragged to court.
“The day he is in court, I will get on a plane to be there.
“If he had any respect at all for our laws and legal system, he would have shown up when first called and given evidence.”
MENSINK MYSTERIOUSLY FLEES BULGARIA
Runaway businessman Clive Mensink has left Bulgaria, travelling with two young men across the border into neighbouring Macedonia.
News Corp has determined that Mensink, 50, travelled in a Mercedes car across the border at
Gyueshevo, a tiny village in western Bulgaria, at 2.31pm on Tuesday, October 9.
He was travelling with two Bulgarian men, aged 36 and 30, and by late last week, had not returned to Bulgaria, which has been his home for most of the last two years after he fled Australia following the collapse of Queensland Nickel in 2016.
He left the country a week before his uncle, Clive Palmer, announced he had appointed his nephew to be “European director’’ of his Titanic II project, based in London. Palmer later amended this to say Mensink would be based in Paris, France.
News Corp visited Mensink’s home in an up-market suburb just outside the centre of the Bulgarian capital Sofia last week. He shares a first-floor flat with his girlfriend, the glamorous Gabriela Konstantinova, who owns the property.
Ms Konstantinova, who holds down a job at the Bulgarian parliament’s National Assembly in Sofia, was at the address.
She was observed over several days returning from work, doing routine chores, putting out the
rubbish, visiting a pet shop near her home, and feeding some of the dozens of stray cats which roam the streets near her home.
She left the home last weekend, carrying a small bag, and boarded the underground Metro, and has not returned to the property since.
Mensink has been living in the eastern European country, where his uncle Clive Palmer has family, for most of the past two years.
One of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the European Union, it holds a certain charm, but has none of the night-life or culture of the big European cities such as Paris, Rome or Barcelona.
Mensink’s relatives Alexander and Stilyana Sokolov, who are parents to Clive Palmer’s wife Anna, have abandoned their Sofia apartment in the Oborischte district and seemingly moved permanently to Australia late last year. Mensink was known to have visited them in the past at their apartment across the city.
He has had a number of other visitors in Bulgaria, including Palmer himself, who issued a press release on October 16 saying he had “caught up with Mr Mensink in Bulgaria recently.’’
He was also visited by Palmer’s brother-in-law George Sokolov, who told a court last week he had met Mr Mensink in Bulgaria in April 2017 to get him to sign documents at Mr Palmer’s request.
Mr Sokolov, who previously had a photography business in Montana, a grim town in regional
Bulgaria, now lives in Queensland. He has previously stood as a Palmer United Party candidate, worked for the party, and now works for Mr Palmer on his legal cases.
He told the Federal Court in Brisbane last Monday that he did not know the current whereabouts of Mr Mensink but thought he was still in Bulgaria.
On October 1, a photograph of Mr Sokolov — who goes by the name Georgi Sokolov in Bulgaria — was posted on Facebook, by a man named Peter Mitchev.
The photograph was tagged as having being taken in Sofia, Bulgaria, on October 1.
“With dear guest from Australia brother-in-law Georgi Sokolov,’’ Mr Mitchev wrote, in a photograph that Mr Sokolov shared on his own page.
COMPLEX LEGAL ROAD TO CHARGE MENSINK
*The corporate watchdog ASIC has the power, under Section 19 of the ASIC Act, to require a person to provide “all reasonable assistance’’ to an investigation. A person can also be required to appear before an ASIC staff member or other person to answer questions. Being “required’’ means they have no choice — they must comply, or break the law.
*A second section of the Act, Section 63, states that a person “must not intentionally and recklessly fail to comply with a requirement made under Section 19.’’
*If ASIC issues a Section 19 summons against Clive Mensink, he is required to show up in Australia for questioning.
*If he doesn’t show up, he will have committed an offence which carries a maximum jail term of two years.
*This means the Australian Federal Police would almost certainly issue a warrant for his arrest, as he would be potentially facing a jail term of longer than one year, the benchmark the AFP sets for issuing international warrants.
*If he was arrested overseas, the Australian Government through the Attorney-General would lodge an extradition application in the Bulgarian courts.
*In order for a person to be extradited from Bulgaria, which is a member of the European Union, the Australian Government must show that the person is facing prosecution for a crime of which Bulgaria has an identical or very similar crime on its statute books.
*This is spelled out in the Extradition and European Arrest Warrants Act.
*A very similar crime does exist in the Bulgarian Criminal Code, under Article 270. This article states that “a person who unlawfully obstructs a government body … shall be punished by a deprivation of liberty of up to three years.’’
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