Court win ‘vindicates’ Gina Rinehart
The High Court has ruled arbitration of a dispute between Gina Rinehart and two of her children must be held in camera.
Billionaire Gina Rinehart says she has been “vindicated” after winning a High Court bid to conceal from public view a bitter stoush with two of her children over her alleged mismanagement of a $5 billion family trust.
The High Court yesterday dismissed appeals against orders sending the dispute to private arbitration brought by two of Mrs Rinehart’s children, Bianca Rinehart and John Hancock.
In a good day for Mrs Rinehart, the decision came as she won a $807 million takeover battle for Canadian coal company Riversdale Resources, with a private equity group that held 48 per cent of the group agreeing to accept her offer for its shares.
The High Court ruling was the latest battle in a long-running legal war between the pair and their mother in which Bianca Rinehart and Mr Hancock have alleged their mother moved valuable ore assets out of the trust.
Bianca Rinehart and Mr Hancock say deeds governing the trust were invalid because they agreed to the terms only because of misconduct by their mother.
Mr Hancock and Mrs Rinehart agreed to the first of the three deeds in 2005, including a clause that disputes were to be resolved through confidential arbitration, amid negotiations between Mrs Rinehart and Rio Tinto over an iron ore joint venture. The venture spins off lucrative royalties for Mrs Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting and has helped make her Australia’s second-richest person, worth $13.12bn according to The Australian’s The List.
Additional agreements were struck in 2006 and 2007 — the last of which, the Hope Downs Deed, bound all of Mrs Rinehart’s four children. The court said a clause mandating disputes about the trust should be sent to confidential arbitration should include disputes about whether the deeds were valid at all.
“It could not have been understood by the parties to these deeds that any challenge to the efficacy of the deeds was to be determined in the public spotlight,” High Court judges Stephen Gageler, Geoffrey Nettle and Michelle Gordon said in a unanimous judgment.
“Especially is this so with respect to the Hope Downs Deed. The Hope Downs Deed was an attempt to put to rest the issues regarding ownership of property which had motivated Mr Hancock in the first place.”
The judges said even though the Rio joint venture was in place by the time of the final deed, financing discussions were under way and “the need for commercial confidence remained”.
“A critical object of the Hope Downs Deed was the maintenance of confidentiality about the affairs of the Hancock Group, the trusts, the intra-family dispute and the provisions of the deeds themselves,” they said.
A spokesman for Hancock Prospecting said: “The position taken by Hancock Prospecting throughout this litigation, to act in accord with deeds it has entered, has been vindicated.”
Solicitors for Mr Hancock and Bianca Rinehart did not respond to requests for comment.