No paper trail to back Clive Palmer’s version

NEW confidential documents from a case in which Clive Palmer is accused of fraud and dishonesty have been released.

CONFIDENTIAL documents reveal Clive Palmer’s top port executive saw no invoices and prepared no budget for $12.167 million in Chinese funds that were siphoned by the politician from a bank ­account only meant to fund a port.

The documents reveal two cheques, provided under subpoena by National Australia Bank, for $10m and $2.167m in August and September last year shortly before the federal election were signed by Mr Palmer, after he had become the sole signatory of the account into which the Chinese funds were deposited.

Mr Palmer, who has strenuously denied any wrongdoing, is challenging allegations by Chinese company Citic Pacific’s subsidiary Sino Iron in the Queensland Supreme Court that he dishonestly procured the $12.167m and funnelled an unknown amount into the electoral campaign of his Palmer United Party, which secured the balance of power in the Senate.

Mr Palmer’s company, Mineralogy, told Citic Pacific that the money had been spent on “port management services” for an iron ore port in Western Australia. However, the documents show that $2.167m went to a Brisbane agency, Media Circus Network, which managed the saturation advertising by PUP last year. The $10m that was siphoned into the account of a company controlled by Mr Palmer, Cosmo Developments, has not yet been traced in the litigation.

Following the lifting of a suppression order by Supreme Court judge David Jackson, The Weekend Australian yesterday reviewed evidence given in confidential arbitration proceedings four months ago by Mr Palmer’s chief executive at the port, Paul Robinson.

Mr Robinson said he prepared budgets for 2011, 2012 and 2013, and he routinely signed hundreds of cheques for the account that held the Chinese funds, but last year he was removed as a signatory by Mr Palmer.

During questioning in the closed-door proceedings, Andrew Bell, SC, a lawyer for Citic Pacific, asked Mr Robinson: “Plainly enough, if there was a legitimate expense for $10m in relation to the port, you would know about it, wouldn’t you?” He replied: “Yes.”

Retired Supreme Court judge Richard Chesterman, QC, who is in charge of the arbitration, asked Mr Robinson: “When you found out that the $10m had been taken from the account, did you ask anyone why it had been taken out and for what purpose it was spent on?”

Mr Robinson replied that he found out in the days before his May testimony and nine months after the withdrawal of the $10m that one of Mr Palmer’s companies, Queensland Nickel, had struck an “agreement to mobilise resources (at the port) at short notice”. He admitted that it was an agreement he had never seen before until the previous Saturday in early May, and that he had “never prepared a budget contemplating a need for $12m in the second half of 2013”.

Dr Bell said it was “a complete fantasy ... to put it bluntly that there was any perceived need for an expenditure of $12m in the second half of 2013, a complete and utter fantasy”.

Dr Bell asked: “You can think of no rational explanation, can you, as to why you wouldn’t have been consulted, given your position as a $400,000 chief executive officer in charge of port operations? You can’t think of any rational reason why you wouldn’t have been consulted about this agreement being entered into or any payments made under it, can you?”

Mr Robinson agreed that “no invoice passed (his) desk” for $10m or $2m, and that he did not know why he was never consulted about purported expenditure on “port management services” of the money siphoned by Mr Palmer from the account.

Mr Robinson, asked about his contact with Mr Palmer, said the Federal member for Fairfax had been in touch with him about his evidence earlier that day to “just see how it was going today” and over both days of the previous weekend. He said they discussed his witness statement. Asked about Cosmo Developments, he said: “I just know that it exists”.

Other documents show that on August 31 last year, Media Circus sent an invoice to PUP for $2,167,065.60, payable “immediately”, as “August and September media booked and approved” would cost $7,167,065.60.

A NAB statement ordered under subpoena shows that a bank account for Cosmo Developments was opened on August 1 last year, and it received $10m of the Chinese funds a week later with a cheque signed by Mr Palmer. Three days before the May 12 questioning of Mr Palmer’s staff in the arbitration, he ordered that $12.7m be put back in the account that had been drained.

He said yesterday his company had served a termination notice on Citic in a bid to force it to cease mining iron ore tenements he controlled. He called for Hong Kong authorities to investigate directors and executives of Citic Pacific.