Clive Palmer, Queensland Nickel liquidators settle private jet case

Clive Palmer, Queensland Nickel liquidators reach deal ahead of potentially messy Supreme Court trial over a $5m private jet.

The two parties have been battling in the courts over the ownership of the Cessna Citation X private jet. Photographer: Liam Kidston

Just minutes before a potentially messy and expensive Supreme Court trial over a $5m private jet was due to start this morning, Clive Palmer and Queensland Nickel liquidators did a deal.

For more than a year, the two parties have been battling in the courts over the ownership of the Cessna Citation X private jet, on which Mr Palmer’s Queensland Nickel paid the $US250,000 deposit in 2011.

The rest of the $US4.55 million purchase was paid by Mr Palmer’s Palmer Leisure Australia on October 18, 2011, after Queensland Nickel tipped $40 million into the resources magnate’s Coolum golf resort.

Corporate records showed the plane was intended to be a QN asset, but in June 2012, the plane was “allegedly” sold to Mr Palmer for $5 million — but the registration was never transferred to the former federal MP and he never paid the money.

Today, on the morning a two-day trial was due to begin before Queensland Supreme Court judge John Bond, the warring sides came to an agreement.

“I am pleased to inform you (that) only a few minutes ago a deed of settlement and release (was reached),” said barrister Graham Gibson QC, for general purpose liquidators FTI Consulting.

Mr Gibson said the deal meant Justice Bond no longer had to decide whether Mr Palmer owned the Cessna, or whether Queensland Nickel needed to be repaid the operating and maintenance costs for the aircraft.

Instead, an undisclosed amount of money — from a multimillion-dollar sum currently being held by the court after another Queensland Nickel related stoush, this time involving mining giant Glencore — will be paid to liquidators.

The deal has the effect of settling two of more than a dozen civil cases before the Supreme Court over Queensland Nickel’s collapse.

Next week, Justice Bond will hear an application from special purpose liquidators PPB Advisory who want to freeze more than $200 million worth of Mr Palmer’s assets.

The 1997 Cessna Citation X.