The boss of hydrogen hopeful Infinite Green Energy has claimed WA Premier Roger Cook can help the company plug a multimillion-dollar debt while attempting to stave off the company’s collapse.
For five weeks, IGE has been quietly fighting a Supreme Court bid by Queensland-based entity DD Investment to have accountants Hall Chadwick appointed liquidators over its failure to repay a $3.85 million debt.
Infinite Green Energy CEO Stephen Gauld.Credit: Kate Ferguson
The application came just three months after the investor secured a judgment to recover the debt, which stemmed from a May 2023 investment deal inked before the relationship between the two parties soured.
IGE chief executive Stephen Gauld, who represented the company before engaging lawyers Edwards Mac Scovell, told the court this month that challenging global markets were to blame for delays in settling the debt.
Gauld insisted repaying the debt was a priority, before claiming he could call the premier and obtain $5 million from a taxpayer fund for economic diversification.
“If I need to go to Roger Cook tomorrow or Monday next week and say, ‘Roger, listen’ because he has got $60 million right now for renewable energy projects … Roger could give us $5 million from the [investment] attraction fund,” Gauld told the court, according to transcripts of the proceedings.
“I can go back to him next week and say, ‘Listen, we’ve got an urgent commitment, I need another $5 million’, and we will get this all done. It’s not an issue.”
But DD Investment’s lawyer Martin Bennett rubbished those claims, pointing out the funds could not be used for that purpose and their release hinged on its projects reaching certain milestones.
“This idea that Mr Gauld has such a relationship that he can ring up the premier and say, ‘Can you give me $5 million to settle a debt?’ is just imaginary,” Bennett told the court.
A spokesperson for the premier confirmed he had no personal relationship with Mr Gauld.
The WA government spokesperson also told this masthead grants from the Investment Attraction Fund were issued through a competitive process and their release depended on the recipient achieving milestones under a financial assistance agreement.
According to court documents obtained by this masthead, DD Investment agreed to hand over $3 million for the issue of shares in IGE at a price of $2.25 if the hydrogen hopeful’s initial public offering was not completed by June 30, 2024.
But the deal was later varied and stipulated that IGE would redeem the 1.685 million shares DD Investment held in the defendant company if the float was not completed by the extended deadline.
Despite demand, DD Investment maintains IGE has failed to pay up.
The investment firm told the court it had grave concerns about IGE’s financial health and its capacity to recover the debt, submitting six months’ worth of correspondence between Gauld and DD Investment’s business consultant, Richard Cao, as evidence.
The text and email threads lay bare DD Investment’s efforts to recover the funds between June 2024 and January 2025, and the dozen occasions IGE promised payment was imminent.
But the most serious allegation was contained in correspondence from Deutsche Bank’s anti-financial crime department, seen by this masthead, which claimed documents IGE sent purporting to be evidence of bank transfers worth millions of dollars were inauthentic and should be treated with a “high degree of scepticism”.
IGE and Gauld vehemently denied the allegations in court, claiming there was no evidence its assets were in jeopardy and branding the appointment of a liquidator a “drastic intrusion” into its affairs.
Lawyers for Infinite Green argued the wind-up application should be thrown out, accusing DD Investment of prejudicing the ability of interested parties to be heard on the matter by failing to lodge a notice of application with the corporate watchdog within the required timeframe.
Both IGE and Gauld have penned undertakings vowing not to dispose of, deal with or diminish the value of the company’s assets until the case is finalised.
The parties have filed supporting documents in their respective cases ahead of the matter returning to court on April 8.
This masthead understands a second investor has since raised concerns about the financial health of the company.
Gauld declined to answer questions when contacted by WAtoday, stating only that IGE intended to settle the matter within days.
The clean hydrogen hopeful, formerly Infinite Blue Energy, is behind several projects earmarked for Western Australia worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
IGE and partners Samsung C&T and Doral Energy have been trying to secure approval to build a $127 million small-scale hydrogen production facility in Northam, which was backed by the WA government in 2023 to the tune of $5 million but has struggled to garner support from planning authorities.
The stoush comes as the state’s environmental watchdog pores over IGE’s Arrowsmith Hydrogen Plant plans, which involve the construction of a wind and solar-powered hydrogen production facility across a 1929 hectare property about 30 kilometres south of Dongara.
IGE hopes to produce first gas in the second half of 2026.
The company has also joined forces with Swiss energy giant Axpo on the Valle Peligna project in central Italy, which, if successful, would be one of the largest commercial-scale hydrogen plants in Southern Europe.
The project received the backing of the federal government’s investment commission Austrade and the Australian Embassy.
But there are mounting concerns about plans to make Australia a hub for the production of “clean” hydrogen, an emissions-free product which uses renewable energy rather than gas to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.
Sections of the industry had hung their hopes on the fuel as a substitute for fossil fuels in hard-to-abate industries, but proponents are struggling to make its production commercially viable.
The lawsuit also comes almost 12 months after a board exodus at IGE, which saw the departure of its chair and former Woodside chief Peter Coleman, Australia Japan Business Co-op chair Tim Lester and former Rio Tinto iron ore boss Chris Salisbury.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.