Palmer nephew faces arrest if he’s a no-show

Clive Palmer’s nephew Clive Mensink risks arrest if he fails to show up as ordered to the Federal Court this week.

Clive Palmer’s nephew Clive Mensink.

Clive Palmer’s nephew Clive Mensink risks arrest if he fails to show up as ordered to the Federal Court this week for public questioning about the collapse of Queensland Nickel.

The Australian understands Mr Mensink has given no indic­ation to liquidators FTI Consulting that he will return from his marathon overseas holiday to comply with the court-issued summons on Thursday in Brisbane.

Federal Court registrar Murray Belcher has the discretionary power to issue an arrest warrant for Mr Mensink — the sole direct­or of Mr Palmer’s Queensland Nickel when it collapsed in Jan­uary last year under $300 million in debts — if he is absent and ­offers no reasonable explanation.

Special-purpose liquidators PPB Advisory have also summonsed Mr Mensink to testify on February 22, but he told them he wouldn’t cut short his foreign ­sojourn before his planned return to Australia in July, unless they pay his expenses.

Mr Mensink left the country on a “prearranged” holiday last year, and Mr Palmer told the ­Federal Court in September that his nephew was “up towards the Arctic” on a cruise from Berlin to St Petersburg.

This week marks the resurrection of public examinations into the company’s demise, with a legal showdown expected between­ Mr Palmer and former Queensland solicitor-general Walter Sofronoff QC, the veteran silk acting for FTI Consulting.

Mr Sofronoff will focus on whether Mr Palmer acted as a shadow or de facto director of Queensland Nickel before it ­failed, resulting in the loss of 800 jobs, as well as the funnelling of cash from Queensland Nickel to other Palmer-owned companies.

According to Federal Court orders seen by The Australian, Mr Palmer has been instructed to turn over more sensitive ­documents about the inner workings of his corporate empire.

Mr Palmer must disclose ­detailed financial information for entities including the Palmer United Party, his flagship corporation Mineralogy, his Sunshine Coast golf resort, and Blue Star Line, the Mineralogy subsidiary that Mr Palmer founded to build a replica of the doomed Titanic.

Many of the entities were given millions of dollars in cash from Queensland Nickel, with FTI Consulting’s damning report last year finding Queensland Nickel had funnelled more than $200m to Mr Palmer’s other companies in the six years before it was plunged into administration.

Queensland Nickel spent nearly $6m on the Blue Star Line alone, including $3.3m for lavish launch parties for the project in Britain and the US, and donated more than $20m to his now-dormant political force, the Palmer United Party.

Mr Palmer must also reveal ­details of the contentious agreement struck between Mineralogy and Chinese company CITIC ­Pacific in 2006 for its West Australian mining project.

One of the goals of liquidators’ public examinations is to work out where cash can be clawed back from, to pay back creditors.

Queensland Nickel’s former chief financial officer Daren Wolfe, Mr Palmer’s wife Anna, PwC partner Derrick Vickers and Mr Palmer’s confidant Domenic Martino will also be publicly ­examined.

Explaining the decision to question Ms Palmer, an FTI Consulting­ spokesman said: “As part of our investigations, we are looking into the security granted by Queensland Nickel to Waratah Coal and China First in the days leading up to our appointment as administrators.

“We believe it may have been an uncommercial or unreasonable director-related transaction.

“Anna Palmer is a director of both Waratah Coal and China First, and was a signatory to the ­security agreement with QNI, which is why we are interested in including her in our examinations.”

Mr Mensink and his solicitor Sam Iskander did not respond to questions from The Australian.