Ex-Fiat boss Clyde Campbell in clear as lawsuit now targets wife

Illustration: Rod Clement.

Carmaker Fiat Chrysler made a big splash when it sued former Aussie boss Clyde Campbell last year, filing court paperwork that made a series of allegations, each more sensational than the last.

Among a dizzying catalogue of alleged wrongdoing was spending $300,000 of company money on a swimming pool at Villa Gusto, an “epicurean retreat” owned by former copper Colin McLaren, giving free cars to people including Gold Coast AFL star Gary Ablett Jr, round ball champ Harry Kewell and Crown Resorts spokeswoman Anne Peacock, plus excessive travel spending that topped $2.7 million, including Victoria Racing Club memberships for Campbell and wife Simone and a $15,000 NZ golf and spa holiday with mates.

But all those claims were ­quietly dropped late last month in a fresh pleading filed by Fiat’s lawyer, Arnold Bloch Leibler’s busiest partner Leon Zwier.

Instead, the car company is going after British company Motortrak, which did website work for it, over $2.4m in kickbacks ­allegedly paid to Campbell.

It has also increased its focus on Simone Campbell, adding her and a company she allegedly controls as defendants and fleshing out details in its claims against her.

Kept in the new pleading is a claim for $550,000 against My Alfa Romeo, a company controlled by Mrs Campbell and Ishan Kunaratnam, a fixer and advancer for James Packer’s Crown.

It is alleged Campbell authorised the upfront payment of the invoices, which were for a “mobile floating billboard”.

However, Fiat has dropped its allegation the “mobile floating billboard” was in fact a boat registered in Kunaratnam’s name, and is now content to claim it wasn’t told of the link between Mrs Campbell and My Alfa Romeo.

Fiat hasn’t given any reason for dropping much of its case against Campbell, but it is believed the car company doesn’t think its former exec has the readies to pay out the original amount and is instead focusing its legal fire where the money is.

Sans Wran wraps

The identities of bigwigs who vouched for the good character of Neville Wran’s daughter, Harriet, including her “intelligence, her love of animals, her emotional sensitivity and her kindness”, look set to remain sealed in a vault beneath the NSW Supreme Court — at least for the moment.

On Tuesday, Justice Ian Harrison declined to release to TheDaily Telegraph the “extensive evidence of good character” he took into account when deciding how much porridge Wran should eat for harbouring a murderer, citing the paper’s “vendetta” against her and his fear it would “treat Ms Wran’s referees in the same unpleasant and misleading fashion in which it has already treated her”.

It’s an unusual move. References are routinely released. In recent weeks alone, courts have released those filed in two other high profile cases: insider trader (and PR queen Roxy Jacenko’s hubby) Oliver Curtis and former Victorian Liberal Party director Damien Mantach, who stole $1.5m from the party.

Given Margin Call has never had an unkind word for Wran, we tried our luck with a fresh application yesterday.

Alas, our protestations of innocence fell upon deaf ears and Harrison refused our application.

Pokemon No Go

The Pokemon Go craze is not only claiming your children. Its also ensnaring some of our listed companies.

The folks at Scott Charlton’s toll road operator Transurban have apparently discovered there is a PokeStop — the place where people can collect the weapons required to capture Pokemons — in the spot known as the cheese sticks on Melbourne’s CityLink, which is causing more than the odd motorist to pull over. Illegally.

It’s not an isolated example — so much so that the roads agencies in Melbourne and Sydney (VicRoads and RMS) have started placing warning signs about the dangers of playing Pokemon while driving.

Both agencies are believed to be looking at what’s happening across the wider network to see what they can do.

Thankfully the July release of Mario Kart Go! for Satnav devices — allowing drivers to liven up long journeys by swerving wildly across the road to pick up powerups which may then be ‘fired’ at other road users — hasn’t yet matched the popularity of the Pokemon phenomenon.

Little wonder the Insurance Council of Australia yesterday issued a po-faced warning that driving while Pokemon-ing might void your coverage if you get in a bingle (as one poor soul did in Melbourne).

7-Eleven ding-dong

Meet the members of Australia’s boardroom club prepared to venture where one of Australia’s bravest regulators, former competition boss Allan Fels, won’t go — into the innards of uber-richie Russ Withers’ scandal-ridden
7-Eleven empire.

In his latest effort to convince all and sundry that the convenience store chain, notorious for underpaying its workers, has turned over a new leaf, chairman Michael Smith yesterday announced three new non-executive directors.

They are Sandra Birkensleigh, a RBA board member and member of the audit and risk committee at Peter Costello’s Nine, who will chair the audit committee, Elizabeth Gaines, a NED at Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s Fortescue, who will chair the retail operations committee, and Dharmendra Chandran, an HR guy from KPMG who will chair the “people committee”, which sounds more like an arm of the Chinese Communist Party than something you’d find in a business.

Margin Call salutes the courage of anyone who would sign on to a senior role with Withers’ mob after Fels was sacked as head of its independent wage panel in May, mounting a blistering attack on the group’s practices on the way out.

Mineral deposits

In other executive moves, senior BHP flack David Byers has left the Big Australian for peak body the Minerals Council, where he is deputy CEO to Brendan Pearson.

Byers, formerly of ExxonMobil, was lured to BHP by Tony Cudmore, whose star sadly seems to have waned a little amid public controversy over the resources giant’s tax bill.

Cudmore was shifted — we would never say shafted — from BHP’s executive committee in March.

His highest moment came last year at the Senate inquiry into corporate tax dodging masterminded by Labor attack dog Sam Dastyari, when he refused to provide info about BHP’s Singapore sales hub that later turned out to be on the public record.

Awkward, as the front page of the committee’s report later pointed out.

Elsewhere in lobbyland, outgoing Business Council of Australia chair Catherine Livingstone has admitted the peak business body campaigned poorly on behalf of the big end of town in the recent election, where a cut to company tax was front and centre.

Livingstone’s CEO, Jennifer Westacott, might be thinking about her next gig.

Will Glasgow is on leave.