Clive Palmer doesn’t know whereabouts of Queensland Nickel director, nephew Clive Mensink
Clive Palmer “doesn’t know” the whereabouts of the former Qld Nickel director, who is due to face court next week.
Clive Palmer says he doesn’t know where his globe-trotting nephew Clive Mensink is, despite him being required to testify to the Federal Court in Brisbane next week.
Mr Palmer told the Federal Court today that the last time he spoke to his nephew – the sole formal director of Queensland Nickel when it collapsed under $300m worth of debts last year – it was at the start of the month.
“At that stage I think he was in the United States ... I think he may have rung me, I think he was on a cruise ship.”
The court has previously heard that Mr Mensink has been overseas on a round-the-world trip since at least June last year, and liquidators have been trying to get him to come back to Australia to be publicly examined about the affairs of Queensland Nickel.
His lawyers told the court he would be back next week to testify. There is a summons ordering him to return, and the Federal Court has a discretionary power to issue a warrant for his arrest if he does not show up without a reasonable excuse.
However, Mr Palmer today said he did not know where Mr Mensink was currently. He said Mr Mensink had “indicated he may come back in July” when they spoke earlier this month.
He agreed to hand his phone over to lawyers for liquidators FTI Consulting so they could write down both of Mr Mensink’s mobile phone numbers.
Later, Mr Palmer’s wife, Anna, was cross-examined about her role as a director of two of Mr Palmer’s companies, Waratah Coal and China First, which were involved in coal exploration in Queensland’s Galilee Basin.
She had difficulty remembering details of a deal she approved, two days before Queensland Nickel sacked 237 Townsville refinery workers in January last year, and five days before it was placed in voluntary administration.
The deal saw Queensland Nickel promise to buy two billion China First shares for $135m to be paid in two instalments over three years, in return for using the companies’ undeveloped coal tenements as security for potential loans.
Mrs Palmer said she took advice on the decision, but could not remember from whom, what form it took, or whether she saw it.
Barrister Walter Sofronoff QC, for liquidators FTI Consulting, asked why she couldn’t remember much about the $135m transaction. “Because it was a year ago,” Mrs Palmer said.
She said she resigned as a director of China First in January this year, but told the court her husband “removed” her as a director from Waratah Coal.
Palmer’s mystery woman
Mr Palmer has angrily tried to avoid answering questions about a woman from Kyrgyzstan whom he paid $1m and flew to Singapore in a private plane to meet him.
The mining magnate demanded his lawyer “object” to the line of questioning in the Federal Court from barrister Walter Sofronoff QC, who is representing the liquidators of Queensland Nickel.
The court has heard Mr Palmer instructed Queensland Nickel pay Evgenia Bednova nearly $1m in November 2012, on a day he ordered $43m be funnelled out of the company’s bank accounts to various locations.
Mr Sofronoff this morning asked Mr Palmer whether he’d ever met Ms Bednova and asked him to describe her.
“I think I met them in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) when I visited there on one occasion,” Mr Palmer said.
“I’m trying to think (what she looks like). I think she’s about six-foot tall, medium build. European. I don’t know if she’s European, but she looks European.”
He estimated she was about 35 or 40, and said he met her in “professional circumstances”.
“We needed someone to deal with industry over there,” Mr Palmer said. “(She) acted as our representative over there.”
He said she had also been to Australia and then recalled he might have met her in Singapore, when he visited for a Forbes conference in 2011.
Mr Sofronoff: “Why (did you meet her in Singapore)?”
Mr Palmer: “It would have been a commercial thing.”
Mr Sofronoff asked whether Mr Palmer could recall ordering his company Mineralogy to spend $250,000 on chartering a Perth-based jet to pick up the woman in Bishkek and take her to Singapore. She was the only person on the flight.
“I don’t recall … I’d have to check my records,” Mr Palmer said.
Soon, the former MP exploded, and said the line of questioning was “absolute rubbish”. He said it was not an examinable affair of Queensland Nickel.
Federal Court registrar Murray Belcher allowed the questioning to continue.
Mr Sofronoff: “Can you think of any business reason you would charter a jet to bring a single person at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars to Bishkek to Singapore?”
Mr Palmer said the country’s airline only had one plane, which subsequently crashed, so if he was having meetings with people, “it was common … to put wellbeing of staff” ahead of financial consideration.
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