Rose Porteous’ inner circle weighs in on Lang Hancock’s memory

A member of Rose and Willie Porteous’ inner circle has weighed in on what she says are attempts to rewrite history.

Juanita Walsh, Rose Hancock and Margot Riou.

For years, Margot Riou had a front-row seat to the Hancock family soap opera.

She was there during the latter years of Lang Hancock’s marriage to his Filipino former housekeeper Rose, she was there during the legendary parties at the pair’s grand Prix D’Amour home, and she was there in the aftermath of his death for the brutal legal battles between Rose and Lang’s daughter, Gina Rinehart.

It was Riou who found bullet fragments after someone fired a gun through a window of the couple’s Mosman Park mansion. And it was Riou who helped Rose write her cookbook, Rose’s Way to a Man’s Heart. Today, however, the 88-year-old Riou is “indignant” at what she says is an unfair denigration of Lang Hancock’s memory as part of the courtroom feud over the family empire.

Lawyers for Rinehart have been arguing in a Supreme Court civil action that her father breached his fiduciary duties in the final years of his life as he shuffled the assets of his business empire after being pressured to sustain his wife Rose’s “luxurious lifestyle”.

“It’s just wrong that (Hancock) is allowed to be vilified like he is,” Riou said. “He didn’t do all of those things, he didn’t steal anybody else’s money, he had every right to spend what he did and that’s been proven in court,” Riou said.

Riou’s anger was sparked by comments delivered by silk Noel Hutley SC, who last month told the court that, while his client took “no joy” from revisiting the events of the 1980s, Hancock Prospecting was “haemorrhaging money” and had embarked on “disastrous” ventures during Lang’s final years.

“By this time, Lang Hancock had taken tens of millions of dollars out of HPPL, most of which went to Rose to pay for things like mansions, luxury cars, jewellery and a private jet,” Hutley said.

Lang, Hutley said, realised “the extent of his wrongdoing” in his final days and started to reverse some transactions but died before the work was completed.

The recent claim that Hancock breached his fiduciary duties echoes similar claims pursued unsuccessfully through the courts by Rinehart many years ago.

Hancock Prospecting is relying in part on those arguments as part of its defence against claims from the descendants of his former business partner, Peter Wright, the family of Pilbara trucking magnate DFD Rhodes, and two of her four children, John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart. Wright Prospecting is seeking billions of dollars of assets and unpaid royalties from Hancock Prospecting while John and Bianca have accused their mother of defrauding them out of their full share of the Hancock empire.

Riou sees similarities between today’s case and the legal sagas that played out after Hancock’s death.

Riou was working for real estate agent Willie Porteous during Hancock’s marriage to Rose. Willie and Lang were close, and Riou struck up a friendship with Rose that endures to this day.

Riou never met Rinehart but witnessed the fallout from legal proceedings she launched in the wake of Hancock’s death. She is particularly upset about what she claims are attempts to rewrite history.

“Everybody is forgetting Lang was the one that found the iron, the one that formed the company,” Riou said.

Riou first entered the Hancock orbit 70 years ago when she took a job as an assistant to Wright. Wright was sophisticated and polished, Hancock every bit the hard-nosed country boy, she says.

She returned to that world decades later when Porteous gave her a job. Rose had earlier been hired by Rinehart as a housekeeper for her father and, according to the cookbook, paid $180 a week with Sunday morning off.

Rose Porteous with her cousin, former Philippines president Gloria Arroyo, and the latter’s granddaughter, Mikaela Arroyo.

Rinehart was fond of Rose until she learned of her new relationship with her father. The WA Supreme Court recently heard she had called her “an oriental concubine” and tried to have her deported, eventually prompting Hancock to remove Rinehart as a director of Hancock Prospecting.

Riou says attempts to portray Rose as someone who took advantage of Hancock, 38 years her senior, overlook the good times they had together. “As soon as he died, Gina … caveated properties he’d given Rose and took all the jewellery back.”

While the marriage of Willie Porteous and Rose raised eyebrows, they have remained married.

Riou said Rose had had health issues in recent years but remained socially active. This week, she hosted a private banquet for her cousin, former Philippines president Gloria Arroyo, on the dinner table that once adorned the dining room of Prix D’Amour.

Mrs Rinehart was contacted for comment.