Catalano’s computer was allegedly seized by ASIC in Byron Bay

Media entrepreneur Antony Catalano. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

The Byron Bay home of media entrepreneur Antony Catalano was raided by the corporate regulator last week, allegedly in relation to trading in asset manager Magellan.

Margin Call can reveal that officials with the Australian ­Securities & Investments Commission descended on Catalano’s trophy home on Thursday in order to collect a computer at the property.

Catalano had earlier attended the office of the Australian Federal Police in Melbourne upon learning of inquiries being made into his affairs.

He was without his computer at the time and is understood to have provided officials with permission to collect it from home in Byron Bay.

It’s unclear what ASIC was hunting around for in Catalano’s (online) filing cabinets – and the corporate plod was silent when asked on Monday – but the investigation appears to have narrowed towards trading in asset manager Magellan.

ASIC appears to be in the investigative phase of its inquiries — it hasn’t charged Catalano with any offence and it’s understood he didn’t personally trade any shares in Magellan.

Catalano – known as The Cat – is the executive chairman of Australian Community Media. He was unavailable for comment on Monday evening because he was hosting a charity event – Flying Fox – at his flagship tourism asset, Raes on Wategos, attended by members of actor Chris Hemsworth’s family.

Catalano is also a director of Nick Bolton’s Keybridge Capital, which last year won a $17.8m options fight with Magellan.

Keybridge is suspended from trading from the ASX as the company is still to submit its audited financial statements for the year.

Keybridge was involved in an extended argument with the ASX earlier this year regarding disclosures around payments to Bolton and companies associated with Catalano.

The fallout from the matter has already come at a significant cost to Bolton, who had his assets temporarily frozen by the NSW Supreme Court last month amid a fight with fund manager Geoff Wilson’s WAM Capital over the payments.

Peterson no-show at Bennelong

Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson was a notable absentee from Monday night’s A-list dinner at Bennelong, held as a throat-clearer for a conservative thought-leadership conference beginning this week.

By that we refer to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, a centre-right organisation launched a year ago in the United Kingdom and co-founded by former deputy prime minister John Anderson.

And while, yes, the question on everyone’s mind at Bennelong was whether Peterson would turn up (his father is unwell, so he never made it to the Australian border) the guestlist remained impressive regardless.

There was former prime minister John Howard and wife Janette seated at the main table, with Howard’s old treasurer Peter Costello also appearing for a rare public outing since being boned as Nine Entertainment chairman.

Arms crossed and certainly brooding, his mien was one of a man still smouldering over that untimely exit.

Senator Jacinta Price and husband Colin Lillie shared the space with fellow culture warriors, among them Victorian MP Moira Deeming, former PM Tony Abbott, Sky News presenter Peta Credlin, her husband Brian Loughnane, geologist Ian Plimer and author Kevin Donnelly.

British historian Niall Ferguson gave a classy speech, off the cuff, opening with a suggestion that King Charles might be dining somewhere in Sydney, but the who’s who gathered in the room at Bennelong.

Baroness Philippa Stroud seemed to round out the UK contingent, unless we count Australian British Chamber of Commerce CEO Ticky Fullerton.

And if it’s a measure of the evolved calibre of this event, there was only wine available for sipping. Beer, it seems, was firmly – and strangely – off the menu.

Kumova’s drive

Spotted! Mining millionaire Tolga Kumova cruising in a bright red Ferrari along New South Head Road in Sydney’s Rose Bay on Monday.

How did we know it was him? The licence plate – KUMOVA – was a dead giveaway. Normally a resident of Melbourne, he and the family have been splitting their time between the two cities in recent months.

Tolga Kumova...

...and his Ferrari in Sydney

As for the car, certainly not a shabby ride for the daycare drop-off, his youngest a passenger in the SF90 Spider. It would have been an SUV on any other day, anonymous among the fleets of them in the area, but apparently Kumova’s is in the shop getting a service.

The prancing horse is a ­hybrid, too (priced at about $950,000), which figures for a guy so committed to the Pilbara lithium sector.

Coal goes nuclear

Coal Australia is the newly formed advocacy body cheerleading for the country’s most unloved power source.

Yes, it’s all about coal at Coal Australia. Coal, coal, coal.

The website is a temple of worship to the misunderstood fossil fuel – how it underpins the nation’s prosperity; how it directly employs 42,500 people; how it’s our second-largest export.

CA’s chair is Nick Jorss and it’s his job to hype loudest for coal. “Coal Australia has a simple mission,” Jorss said in August, when the organisation launched, “to unleash the pride in the coal sector and the tens of thousands of people within it.”

Rah!

But then why is so much of Coal Australia’s money – more than $1m – being spent on groups obsessed with nuclear energy?

Coal Australia chairman Nick Jorss says the group’s mission is to ‘unleash the pride in the coal sector’. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

In recent months, CA has donated $613,500 to the Australian Institute for Progress and $495,000 to Australians for Prosperity, according to figures published in this newspaper a week ago. Both are Queensland-based, the former run by Bob Tucker, once a Queensland Liberal Party president, the latter by Julian Simmonds, a former Queensland federal MP.

Neither are known for any vigorous advocacy on coal.

AIP has twice mentioned coal over the past 12 months. In July, it hosted an event with energy economist Lars Schernikau, who spoke of coal’s starring role in Germany’s energy transition. A month earlier it issued a press statement criticising the Queensland government for spending coal royalties on cost-of-living handouts.

But on nuclear? Oh, boy, does the AIP have much to say about nuclear power.

Executive director Graham Young has released periodic statements all year calling nuclear a “no-brainer” and telling Australians to “get on board – for the economy and for the environment”.

In May, he even issued what sounded like a total betrayal of coal. He called for the “sensible integration of nuclear into the network, with the most likely use being to replace coal-fired power stations”. Uh oh.

But at least the AIP deigned to mention coal (notwithstanding the context of phasing it out).

Australians for Prosperity doesn’t talk about coal at all on its website. Instead, there’s a full-throated endorsement of that other power source: nuclear! “In a country blessed with vast uranium reserves, nuclear energy should be an option,” it says.

So what gives? Why are these two organisations preoccupied with nuclear power being lavished with so much money by the coal lobby?

Is it that CA is fumbling about with its war chest of cash and doesn’t know what it’s doing? Or are we witnessing a real-time example of how influence is bought at think tanks on the fringe? If either starts mentioning coal a bit more, you’ll know why.