Ken Talbot’s widow Amanda Talbot threatened to ‘destroy’ administrator of his estate, court hears

Mining mogul Ken Talbot’s widow planned to ‘completely destroy’ the reputation of the administrator of her husband’s estate after she fell out with him when she was asked to pay rent on a $22m Italian villa, a court has heard.

Mining mogul Ken Talbot’s widow planned to “completely destroy” the reputation of the administrator of her husband’s estate after she fell out with him after she was asked to pay rent on the estate’s $22m Italian villa, a court has heard.

During cross examination on the third day of her civil suit against the estate administrator, lawyer Bill Boyd, Amanda Talbot agreed she wrote an email in 2015 where she said she would destroy Mr Boyd’s reputation by “telling the world how incompetent he has been” unless Mr Boyd agreed to resign and appoint herself and another man as administrator.

Under cross-examination by Sandy Thompson QC, for Mr Boyd, in the Supreme Court in Brisbane on Wednesday Mrs Talbot agreed that one of the issues that motivated her to plan to “destroy” Mr Boyd’s reputation was because in 2015 he had asked her to pay rent to meet the hefty $300,000 a year running and holding costs of Villa Calvi, in the town of Blevio on Lake Como.

The Villa Calvi is located in the village of Blevio, some 5 km north of the town of Como.

Mr Boyd had suggested the villa could be rented for up to 30,000 euros a week.

The palatial home was purchased by a company belonging to husband Ken for $22m in December 2007.

Mrs Talbot, from Teneriffe, told the court she wanted to buy a home in Italy because her father was Italian.

The home was purchased a year before Mr Talbot was charged with 35 counts of making corrupt payments to Queensland Minister Gordon Nuttall.

Talbot died in a plane crash in the Republic of Congo on June 19, 2010, two months before his trial on the corruption charges was due to start in a Brisbane court.

Mrs Talbot is suing Mr Boyd alleging he negligently failed to sell assets promptly following his appointment as administrator in 2012.

Mr Thompson submitted that some of the delays were due to Mrs Talbot waiting for share prices of oil and gas stocks to recover before selling.

In the November 2015 email to her lawyer Paul Gleeson, filed as evidence in court yesterday, Mrs Talbot says that her daughter Claudia had had a “breakdown” and had been “crying for hours” because they would now have to pay rent to stay at Villa Calvi.

Amanda Talbot (far left), the widow of billionaire mining mogul Ken Talbot, and his daughter Alexandra (in floral dress) leave the Supreme Court in Brisbane. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

“She is so insulted and cant understand why,” Mrs Talbot said of daughter Claudia.

When their father died his estate was worth an estimated $1.1 billion, and Claudia and Alexandra were living between their apartment on Avenue Hoche in Paris, near the Arc de Triomphe, and Italy and were being homeschooled, the court heard.

In a second email Mrs Talbot sent to Mr Gleeson two weeks later, Mrs Talbot wrote: “I want to continually harass Bill with emails and wear him down”.

Mrs Talbot, who was married to Ken for 15 years, agreed that Liam and Courtney, Mr Talbot’s two children from his first marriage, have pressed to have Villa Calvi sold, and Mrs Talbot was unhappy about this.

When it was suggested that Mrs Talbot and her daughters could buy Villa Calvi from the estate for $12m, Liam Talbot complained that Mrs Talbot was trying to get the villa “at a bargain price”.

Mrs Talbot told Justice David Boddice that she felt that Mr Boyd was treating her in a “very aggressive” way over $60,000 worth of her furniture she had at the villa, which she refused to allow to be used by tenants.

Bill Boyd, a Brisbane solicitor who is the administrator of Ken Talbot's estate – Photo Sarah Marshall

“You engaged some Italian lawyers … and threatened to bring proceedings if anybody was allowed to rent the property?” Mr Thompson suggested.

“Ah no I don’t believe that, no I don’t think that’s the case,” Mrs Talbot said.

“I was told that my furniture would be removed on a certain day, so I had to jump on a plane and go over there. The project manager was also sent over and also a partner from (law firm) Allens,” Mrs Talbot told the court.

Talbot made his fortune in coal mining, founding Macarthur Coal which was worth $3.1 billion at the time of his death, and died on June 19, 2010 in a plane crash during a flight to inspect a mine site in the Republic of the Congo.

He left 30 per cent of his wealth to a charitable foundation, and his two older children from a previous marriage, Liam and Courtney, each received 24 per cent, with the remainder divided between Mrs Talbot and her two children.

The hearing is set to run for more than three weeks and continues today.