Palmer case to call $1m mystery woman

A Kyrgyzstani woman who was transferred $1m from Queensland Nickel has been subpoenaed.

Evgenia Bednova has been subpoenaed to give evidence at the trial into the collapse of Queensland Nickel.

A mysterious Kyrgyzstani woman who was transferred $1 million from Queensland Nickel at the personal request of Clive Palmer has been subpoenaed to appear at the trial into the company’s collapse.

Evgenia Bednova is one of 22 defendants in the lawsuit filed by QNI’s liquidators and was this month the subject of a subpoena delivered to her legal team, Brisbane law firm Alexander Law.

Beginning on July 15, the mammoth Queensland Supreme Court trial will investigate liquidators’ claims that Mr Palmer personally owes creditors $73m and should pay an extra $13m in personal damages for allowing the company to trade while insolvent.

The subpoena request is for Ms Bednova to appear in Brisbane on July 15 and could result in an arrest warrant being issued if she does not attend.

In a 2012 letter previously tendered to the court, Mr Palmer asked QNI chief financial officer Daren Wolfe to transfer $1m to Ms Bednova, 38, for “representation fees” for her work as a mining consultant.

The money was purportedly for her to search for mining ­opportunities in the mountain ranges around her hometown of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

QNI’s taxpayer-funded liquidators have questioned the claim that Ms Bednova was paid for a service, saying there was no record of what was offered.

The transfer took place on ­November 29, 2012, the same day Mr Palmer authorised payments of $15m to himself, $15m to his resort in Bora Bora and $8m to wife Anna’s fathe­r, Alexandar ­Sokolov. On another occasion, in 2011, Mr Palmer’s company Mineralogy paid $250,000 to fly Ms Bednova on a private charter from Kyrgyzstan to meet Mr Palmer in Singapore.

Special purpose liquidators PPB Advisory were appointed by the federal government to recoup $70m in taxpayer money used to cover employee entitlements under the Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme when the Townsville nickel refinery collapsed in 2016, owing creditors more than $300m.

The liquidators claim that several creditors, including Mr Palmer, could be liable to pay damages to QNI for alleged breaches of corporations laws. Among the claims is that Mr Palmer was a ­director of QNI up until the time it went into administration.

The liquidators have previously sought to have Mr Palmer’s nephew, Clive Mensink, who now lives in Bulgaria, give evidence in the Federal Court, but he has not been forthcoming and is subject to two arrest warrants.