Rinehart siblings side-by-side for battle over family billions

Showing a rare family unity, John Hancock and sister Bianca Rinehart walked into the WA Supreme Court on Monday.

John and Bianca Rinehart. arrive at the Supreme Court in Perth. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sharon Smith

Showing a unity that has rarely been associated with the family, John Hancock was side-by-side with his sister Bianca Rinehart as they walked into the Western Australian Supreme Court on Monday.

The pair were there to hear their legal team, headed by Christopher Withers SC, deliver their closing arguments as to why much of Australia’s biggest fortune should not be in the hands of their mother, Gina Rinehart, but them.

John and Bianca occupy one corner of a sprawling, long-running legal battle against their mother for control of the hugely lucrative Hope Downs and East Angelas iron ore deposits in the Pilbara.

John and Bianca believe they are trying to deliver on the wishes of their grandfather, iron ore pioneer Lang Hancock, in their efforts to wrest control from their mother. At the same time, Wright Prospecting – the company owned by the descendants of Lang’s business partner Peter Wright – is arguing that they should be entitled to interests in the iron ore projects.

Up until Monday, Bianca had been the only one of the high-profile individuals behind the case to attend the courtroom in person.

The two siblings listened as Mr Withers detailed the various events stretching back decades that shaped their case.

Mr Withers said Lang had had to go it alone in his efforts to secure the Hope Downs tenements after both Mrs Rinehart and Wright Prospecting wanted nothing to do with his plans for the project.

The Hope Downs tenements had been stripped from the partners by the state government several years earlier, but Lang lobbied hard for them to be returned.

The central plank of Lang’s pitch was a plan to export ore from the tenements to Romania, in an attempt to satisfy the state’s desire to diversify iron ore demand away from Japan.

But the iron ore pioneer’s enthusiasm for dealing with the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu was not shared by Wright Prospecting or Mrs Rinehart, which Mr Withers said was the reason Lang pursued the venture through another subsidiary, Hancock Mining (HML), rather than through the HPPL entity in which Mrs Rinehart was a shareholder.

“WPPL didn’t want to go into the business of exporting ore to Romania and left it to Lang to pursue that opportunity on his own. Gina didn’t want HPPL to have anything to do with it, so it was HML that pursued the opportunity,” Mr Withers said.

Mrs Rinehart, the two children say, committed fraud when she later absorbed Hancock Mining and Hope Downs into HPPL.

“The mining assets had to be acquired by HPPL through fraud because Gina and HPPL had no legitimate means of acquiring the assets,” Mr Withers said.

“They were unwilling to pay fair value for them. And they’d been given legal advice that HPPL could not prove its claim that the tenements were held on constructive trust for HPPL.”

He argued that the court should take into account Mrs Rinehart’s decision not to step into the witness box in an effort to explain the transactions that brought the Hope Downs tenements into HPPL.

“We say there’s a vast body of evidence that shows that she did know what he was doing, and Gina wouldn’t get in the witness box to deny it,” he said.

WPPL’s case, Mr Withers said, was driven by their regret of not stepping in to participate in the project when they had a chance.

The Romanian plans ultimately fell away, and the Hope Downs deposits have since been mined for several years in joint venture with mining giant Rio Tinto.