Clive Palmer’s two-minute meeting to sign off on millions

Clive Palmer held two meetings with himself in November to approve more than $170m in questionable payments.

Clive Palmer in Brisbane in October.

Clive Palmer held two meetings with himself in November to approve, retrospectively, more than $170 million in questionable payments from Queensland Nickel to foreign women, his family, his corporate empire and himself, four years after the cash was ­siphoned from the company.

The pair of brief meetings was held at Mr Palmer’s Brisbane corporate headquarters on November 21 last year, in the middle of a huge lawsuit suing the former ­tycoon over the transactions.

Mr Palmer’s Queensland Nickel company operated a nickel refinery in the north Queensland city of Townsville until it collapsed under mounting debts in early 2016, costing creditors $300m and forcing nearly 800 employees out of work.

The payments approved at the November 21 meetings include $4.5m to mysterious Hong Kong woman Zhenghong Zhang, nearly $1m to Kyrgyzstani woman ­Evgenia Bednova, $14m to Mr Palmer himself, and $7.7m to Mr Palmer’s father-in-law Alex ­Sokolov in late 2012.

Minutes of the secret meetings are contained in a new affidavit filed by Mr Palmer’s former financial lieutenant Daren Wolfe in the Queensland Supreme Court lawsuit late last week.

The documents reveal Mr Palmer, representing three of his Queensland Nickel-related companies, appointed himself chairman of the meetings and voted to “approve and ratify” all directions he gave to Queensland Nickel “in whatever capacity” from 2009 to 2016. “It was resolved to ratify and approve all actions, payments and activities of Clive Palmer for the period 1 July, 2009, to the date hereof,” both sets of minutes read.

GRAPHIC: The meeting’s minutes

An employee of Mr Palmer, named as Michael Mashayan­yika, was the only other person listed as in the room. The minutes note he “attended as an observer by invitation”.

The minutes for both meetings — one of which started at 4.07pm that day, the other at 4.09pm — are virtually identical, down to the repetition of a spelling mistake in the name of one of Mr Palmer’s companies. They list and approve 27 payments and transactions from Queensland Nickel between 2011 and 2015, including $57m used by Mr Palmer’s Coolum golf resort to pay for expenses and working capital for five years, $9.2m for his resort in Bora Bora, and nearly $78,000 for a Mer­cedes-Benz Mr Palmer gave his daughter. Both sets of minutes are signed by Mr Palmer.

Queensland Nickel’s liquidators have been pursuing Mr Palmer in the courts for months over the payments and other ­alleged wrongdoing that sparked the company’s collapse, to try to claw back $300m owed to creditors, including $70m to federal ­taxpayers.

The commonwealth government was forced to intervene and pay for $70m in unpaid entitlements — such as long service leave and redundancy rights — that Mr Palmer’s company failed to pay to sacked Queensland Nickel workers.

Mr Palmer did not respond to an inquiry from The Australian yesterday about the November meetings. However, he did put out a press release announcing he was suing Australian Super for failing to pay him less than $90,000 in superannuation entitlements, believed to have been accrued during his brief career as the MP for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax.

“If Australian Super refuses to pay a former member of the House of Representatives, or to communicate with him in relation to his entitlements, what chance does the average citizen have in dealing with such a body?” Mr Palmer said in the statement.

Mr Palmer has denied any wrongdoing in relation to the collapse of Queensland Nickel and is strenuously defending the liquidators’ lawsuits.

In their latest statement of claim filed in the Supreme Court, Queensland Nickel’s liquidators allege the payments out of the company represented a “breach of trust” by Mr Palmer, who they allege acted as a shadow director of the company.

Liquidators allege the payments — authorised by Mr Palmer and to the benefit of Mr Palmer personally or his associated interests — hurt Queensland Nickel and prevented the company from being able to pay its employees’ entitlements.

“Mr Palmer … breached the duties … in that he failed to exercise his powers and discharge his duty with the degree of care and diligence that a reasonable person would have exercised in that he allowed the payments and transfers to occur,” the statement of claim by liquidators FTI Consulting and PPB Advisory alleges.

The Queensland Supreme Court claim demands $204m in compensation from Mr Palmer, as well as return of the payments the businessman siphoned from Queensland Nickel.