Palmer billions swell after legal victory over royalties
More than $1m a day in royalties will flow into Clive Palmer’s coffers following a legal victory over Chinese giant CITIC.
Clive Palmer has put the WA Labor government on notice that his political spending clout is undiminished after the WA Supreme Court handed him a win in a legal dispute with CITIC, ensuring the Queensland businessman retains payments worth more than $1 million a day from the Chinese corporation.
The payments — first ordered by a Supreme Court judge in late 2017 — were the major source of the cash that bankrolled Mr Palmer’s $60m failed attempt to win his way back into federal parliament at the weekend’s election.
In the wake of yesterday’s legal victory, Mr Palmer ramped up his attacks on Premier Mark McGowan, releasing an online ad demanding the WA government withdraw threats to intervene in another section of the legal battle between Mr Palmer and CITIC over the future of the $16 billion Sino Iron magnetite project in WA’s Pilbara region.
Mr Palmer’s lawyers yesterday cemented the businessman’s place on Australia’s rich-list, winning a legal victory that will ensure more than $1m a day flows into Mr Palmer’s coffers from one of China’s biggest companies.
The WA Supreme Court dismissed an appeal from CITIC in a complex iron ore payment dispute, upholding the validity of a lucrative iron ore royalty ruling that ensures CITIC pays Mr Palmer’s Mineralogy about $US10 for each tonne of iron ore it ships from Western Australia.
At the same time as his massive federal election spend, Mr Palmer was also spending big on ads attacking the WA Labor government, which has threatened to change a state agreement covering the Sino Iron project — in which Mr Palmer is the landlord to the CITIC-built mine and processing plant — to allow the Chinese company to expand a tailings dam to extend the life of the operation without the input of Mr Palmer’s resources company Mineralogy.
Mr Palmer has demanded CITIC pay more than $500m into an “environmental rehabilitation fund” and has refused to submit plans for the extension of the project, which CITIC says is necessary to keep operating, and risks 3000 WA jobs.
The latest online ad released by Mr Palmer says “public officials need to be loyal to Australia, and their oath of office and protect the law and our democracy”.
CITIC has been locked in a battle with Mr Palmer for much of the past decade over royalty payments from the Pilbara iron ore project, which is still to turn a profit.
The payments to Mr Palmer are worth about $US10 a tonne of magnetite concentrate shipped from Australia, and CITIC exported 19 million tonnes of magnetite iron ore from the project last year.
CITIC had appealed the 2017 decision, arguing that the royalty was being calculated on the benchmark price for iron ore that no longer existed, but the court rejected its appeal. A spokesman for CITIC said the company would examine the ruling closely.