Clive Palmer loses bid have charges thrown out of court

Mining magnate Clive Palmer has lost his latest bid to have criminal charges against him thrown out of court.

Clive Palmer was charged in 2018 with breaching corporate law after a failed bid to take over The President’s Club. Picture: AAP

Mining magnate Clive Palmer has lost his latest bid to have criminal charges against him thrown out of court.

The self-described billionaire was charged in February 2018 with breaching corporate law after a failed 2012 takeover bid of The President’s Club, which represents timeshare owners at his former Palmer Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast.

By law, a person or company who announces a takeover bid has two months to make an offer on shares or securities.

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission alleges Mr Palmer and his company Palmer Leisure Coolum did not follow through after publicly announcing a takeover of The President’s Club.

Mr Palmer has been at loggerheads with the timeshare owners of villas at the former luxury resort since it was mothballed in 2016.

In a claim lodged in September 2018, Mr Palmer and Palmer Leisure Coolum sought an order that the proceedings against him in the Magistrates Court be permanently stayed.

He claimed the charges were politically motivated to stop him from returning to politics ahead of last year’s federal election.

He sued the Magistrates Court of Queensland, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and ASIC for personal damages and asked the court to make declarations that the charges against him were an abuse of process and derived out of an incorrect interpretation of the Corporations Act.

The original claim was rejected but Mr Palmer and his company appealed against the decision, which was ultimately rejected by the Court of Appeal on Tuesday.

The court found Mr Palmer’s claims were “vexatious” and “untenable” and had correctly been rejected by the Supreme Court.

“I conclude that there was no reasonably arguable substance in any of the argued bases for the appellants’ claims that the committal proceedings should be permanently stayed,” Judge Hugh Fraser said in his judgment.

Mr Palmer was last month charge by ASIC with more breaches of corporate law and is due to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Friday.

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.