Foul-mouth Clive Palmer says PM, banks out to get him

Clive Palmer warned his nephew, the director of Queensland ­Nickel, not to send him emails or ‘you f..k everything’.

Clive Palmer at the Federal Court in Brisbane yesterday.

Clive Palmer warned his nephew, the director of Queensland ­Nickel, not to send him emails or to “cover your arse or you f..k everything”.

The former MP also accused Malcolm Turnbull and the big banks of a “political witch-hunt” to destroy the company.

In a revelation-packed day of evidence at the Federal Court public examination into the collapse of QN, Mr Palmer said he lost his mobile phone eight weeks ago in a Gold Coast steakhouse before he could turn it over to liquidators. He also declared he had the funds to bail out QN late last year, but didn’t because he was “not a happy chappy” because his nephew, Clive Mensink, hadn’t provided a current budget.

Mr Palmer said he had tipped in $2.5 million in December to cover staff wages — a figure Tom Sullivan QC for special purpose liquidators PPB Advisory said wouldn’t “touch the sides” of the company’s mounting debts.

Mr Palmer replied: “(It was) more than any of the workers would put in.”

Nearly 800 workers were sacked from Mr Palmer’s wholly owned refinery earlier this year, with federal taxpayers forced to pay for more than $65m in redundancy entitlements.

The court was read an expletive-laden email sent from Mr Palmer’s “Terry Smith” alias email address to Mr Mensink on November 29 last year, at the same time as the pair was trying to secure a $25m loan guarantee from the state government. The email carried the subject line “Letter to the Treasurer”.

“I told you what to do,” Mr Palmer wrote to Mr Mensink. “Do it. Do not send me anything to cover your arse or you f..k everything. Do not contact me by email again.”

The former federal MP said he could not recall what the email was about, or whether the correspondence then dried up between him and his nephew.

Mr Mensink was QN’s sole registered director when the company collapsed into adminis­tration in January. However, liquidators allege Mr Palmer acted as a shadow director, which if proven could make him legally liable. Mr Palmer denies the claim and says though he gave regular directions to the company, and Mr Mensink, it was only as chairman of the QN Joint Venture Owner’s Committee.

Liquidators have not been able to serve Mr Mensink with two separate summonses because he left the country in June, and Mr Palmer said he was currently on his way to St Petersburg on a cruise. “He said he had no plans (to return to Australia) at the ­moment,” Mr Palmer told the court.

Mr Palmer, flanked by QN’s chief financial officer, Daren Wolfe, sought a $25m overdraft from the big four Australian banks for QN in September last year. All requests were denied.

He alleged the rejections were as a result of a meeting he had with the Prime Minister on Oct­ober 9 in his Sydney office.

Mr Palmer said Mr Turnbull reassured him he would speak to the heads of the major banks.

But he alleged the Prime Minister turned the banks against him because he was the Liberal Party’s political enemy and all of the bank bosses were LNP donors. “It’s a political witch-hunt,” Mr Palmer said.

Mr Palmer returns to the witness box on Thursday.