Clive Palmer still pursued for $11.4bn after ‘victory’

China’s Citic could still pursue the vast bulk of a restitution claim against Clive Palmer.

Clive Palmer at the AWM. Question time in the House of Representatives in Parliament House in Canberra. The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during Question Time in the House of Representatives in Parliament House Canberra. Picture Gary Ramage

Clive Palmer proclaimed victory over his estranged Chinese business partners yesterday, on the basis that a court found a claim for restitution against him should be limited to $11.4 billion rather than $12bn.

Mr Palmer took to Twitter yesterday to proclaim that the “Western Australian Supreme Court throws out Citic claims”, while his office released a strongly worded press release proclaiming “yet another significant court victor­y against Citic”.

The reality, however, was less emphatic.

The Supreme Court, in a judgment handed down on Tuesday night, found that China’s Citic could still pursue the vast bulk of a restitution claim against Mr Palmer.

Citic has spent about $12bn on the project to date and had been looking to potentially pursue Mr Palmer for all of that, but the Supre­me Court judgment found the claim would have to exclude just less than $600m of payments made to Mr Palmer at the start of their business relationship.

Citic launched the restitution claim earlier this year as a fallback in case it failed in its primary disputes with Mr Palmer over an iron ore royalty potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Supreme Court judge John Chaney ruled late on Tuesday that Citic’s claim for a return of the $US415m in upfront payments Citic made to Mr Palmer to enter Sino Iron back in 2006 should be struck out from the restitut­ion case on the basis that the claim was “not reasonably arguab­le”.

But Justice Chaney stopped short of striking out the more substantial matter of restitution for the billions of dollars spent by Citic building the Sino Iron project.

While the judge found that there may be “considerable merit” to Mineralogy’s arguments against the claim for the project’s development costs, he did not believ­e that claim should be struck out.

“I am not satisfied that the propositions advanced by the plaintiffs (Citic) are not arguable or that there is no basis for the legal conclusion contended for by the plaintiffs,” Justice Chaney wrote.

The Chinese state-owned Citic and Mr Palmer have been fighting legal battles on numerous fronts following the deterioration of their relationship.

Since buying the Sino Iron project off Mineralogy in 2006, Citic has been beset by cost blowouts and delays, as well as a raft of disputes with Mr Palmer.

Mr Palmer yesterday described the Supreme Court’s decisio­n as a “significant” win and accused Citic of abusing Australia’s court processes and subverting the justice system.

“What is more disappointing is the Australian law firms and senior­ barristers who prostitute themselves and abandon their training and obligations to the court to only engage in litigation which is brought for a proper purpose and is based in a legitimate claim,” Mr Palmer said.

“They do a great disservice to the courts and our legal system. It is time they stopped chasing money for the sake of money and realised this country stands for more than that.”

A spokesman for Citic noted that the main restitution case will still be heard by the Supreme Court at a later date if necessary.

“Mineralogy has failed in its attempt to strike out Citic’s main restitution claim. This claim focuses­ on our massive investment in Sino Iron,” the Citic spokesman said.

“Suggestions otherwise mischaracterise the judgment.”