Clive Palmer derides ASIC’s charges as ‘kowtowing to Chinese’

Former federal MP Clive Palmer has claimed Australia’s corporate watchdog is doing the ‘Chinese government’s bidding’.

Clive Palmer says, ‘ASIC is doing the Chinese government’s bidding in their quest to control our country’. Picture: AAP

Former federal MP Clive Palmer has claimed Australia’s corporate watchdog is doing the “Chinese government’s bidding” after charging him with four criminal offences, including fraud.

The Australian Securities & ­Investments Commission senior commissioner John Price told a parliamentary oversight hearing on Friday that Mr Palmer had been charged with dishonestly gaining a benefit or advantage, pecuniary or otherwise, for another person.

He has also been charged with two counts of dishonestly using his position as a director of a corporation with the intention of directly or indirectly gaining an advantage for someone else.

The Australian understands the charges relate to two payments of $10m and $2.16m transferred out of an account belonging to Mr Palmer’s flagship company Mineralogy in 2013. It has previously been alleged that Mr Palmer used some of the cash to help fund his political party’s federal election campaign in that year; Mr Palmer has always denied wrongdoing.

According to a civil court judgment cited by Mr Palmer on Sunday, the businessman drew a cheque of $10m on August 8, 2013, to Cosmo Developments, one of Mr Palmer’s companies. The following month, he drew another cheque payable to advertising company Media Circus Network for $2.167m.

His estranged Chinese business partners CITIC Pacific — known in the Queensland civil court case as Sino Iron and Korean Steel — alleged the payments were made by Mineralogy in a breach of trust, assisted by Mr Palmer.

CITIC alleged the money was paid by the Chinese-backed company into a Mineralogy bank ­account that was supposed to be used for the operation of its port at the Sino Iron mining project in Western Australia, of which Mr Palmer is a partner. CITIC claimed Mineralogy and Mr Palmer had been dishonest and fraudulent.

The court judgment notes that in 2014, just before the civil court battle, Mineralogy paid the ­Chinese companies $12.167m “on account of the challenged payments” but the companies continued the civil pursuit of Mineralogy and Mr Palmer regardless.

Justice David Jackson examined the spat in the Queensland Supreme Court in 2014 and 2015. He decided that it was “not necessary to make a specific finding of dishonest or fraudulent design by Mineralogy, through (Mr Palmer), or of dishonest assistance with knowledge by (Mr Palmer)”.

However, he did find that both of the payments by Mr Palmer were “unauthorised”. He dismissed the Sino Iron and Korean Steel claims against Mr Palmer and Cosmo Developments.

Mr Palmer said on Sunday there was “no merit” in the ASIC summons or new charges, and “would be shown to be yet another ASIC embarrassment”.

“It is of no concern to me, no concern at all, because the matters set out are not true,” he said.

“Now five years after the ­Chinese failed to get a judgment in the Queensland Supreme Court and five years after the Jackson judgment, ASIC brings these false charges and accusations against me personally.

“ASIC is doing the Chinese government’s bidding in their quest to control our country.”

Mr Palmer is due in court later this month.