Queensland Nickel owed $215m when it collapsed two years ago

THE staggering amount of money owed to creditors by Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel when it collapsed has been revealed by new court documents, including $88 million to rail giant Aurizon and $890,000 to one employee alone.

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ONE Queensland Nickel employee was owed a staggering $890,000 alone and rail giant Aurizon $88 million when the company collapsed two years ago, new court documents outlining the scale of the fiasco reveal.

An analysis of unpaid liabilities by liquidators claims Clive Palmer’s Townsville-based refinery owed more than $215 million to hundreds of creditors when it collapsed including more than $74 million to almost 800 employees.

Queensland Nickel’s Yabulu refinery in Townville. Picture: Zak Simmonds

While the Federal Government intervened and paid $64 million of the $74 million in owed entitlements to staff under the Fair Entitlement’ Guarantee (FEG), other corporate creditors are still chasing more than $141 million in outstanding payments.

Aurizon has been named as the biggest creditor in the company’s collapse with more than $88m in unpaid contracts for haulage services.

More than 150 businesses are named as third party creditors in the court documents for a range of unpaid services from transport to fuel and even marketing and uniforms.

Liquidators say GE Capital is owed $25.8 million for an aircraft lease and Australian Eastern Railroad is owed more than $4.6m in unpaid haulage fees.

There is also more than $2.4 million owed to the Australian Taxation Office for unpaid GST, fuel excise duty fees and other taxes while more than $1.4 million in outstanding payroll tax is owed to the Office of State Revenue.

One employee who had worked at the refinery since 1988 was owed more than $893,000 in annual leave, redundancy payments and long service leave and a large portion of staff were owed payments in the hundreds of thousands.

About $10 million in staff entitlements is still outstanding despite the government intervention.

Former Queensland Nickel financial officer Daren Wolfe says his analysis puts the debts owed to creditors as $134.9 million.

Former Queensland Nickel chief financial officer Daren Wolfe has filed an affidavit with the court saying he has analysed creditors’ claims and believes a number of invoices have been paid making the total amount owed to third party creditors $134.9 million rather than $141 million as claimed in the lawsuit.

The documents were filed as part of a Supreme Court legal bid by taxpayer-funded liquidators who are trying to claw back money owed to creditors and the Federal Government which funded the staff entitlements.

They have also launched a bid to have the mining magnate’s assets frozen saying they fear he will dissipate company assets and forgive loans before the court battle to reimburse creditors is over.