The lawyer fighting to stop Julian Wright from regaining access to his father’s multibillion-dollar iron ore empire has rubbished fraud claims against his siblings, labelling their depiction “reprehensible”.
Julian Wright outside the Supreme Court in Perth last year. He has lost his suit against the very reclusive Angela Bennett over their family’s iron ore fortune. Credit: Philip Gostelow
The descendants of the late Peter Wright, the former business partner of mining magnate Lang Hancock, have been dragged back to the Supreme Court after Julian pushed to have a ruling that has kept him out of the family estate overturned.
Last year, Justice Rene Le Miere found he was not entitled to claw back the one-third stake in Wright Prospecting he sold to his late brother Michael Wright and sister Angela Bennett in 1987.
That’s despite also finding the pair had breached their duties as executors by harbouring details about the breadth of their father’s mining interests to acquire the share at an “undervalue”.
To further complicate matters, a 2008 settlement between Angela and Julian’s two children Natalie and Timothy, who secured a $70 million payout, allegedly barred Julian from taking any further legal action against the family.
Dubbed the “black sheep” of the family, Julian has long claimed he was duped into taking the $6.82 million deal and has been fighting to get his stake back since 2017.
With a steady stream of royalties having flown into the company from three lucrative agreements over swathes of Western Australia’s premier iron ore province since then, Julian’s shareholding would now be worth several billion dollars.
Hancock Prospecting's Roy Hill iron ore mine in Pilbara.Credit: Angela Macdonald-Smith
But he claims he had no idea his father’s company owned mining royalties when he signed the paperwork and exited the company.
Over the past year, royalties paid to Wright Prospecting have netted shareholders VOC Group and AMB Holdings, entities controlled by Angela and Michael’s children Alexandra Burt and Leonie Baldock, have resulted in more than $345 million in dividends alone.
Philanthropist and Voyager Estate owner Burt is one of the state’s wealthiest people, using her $1.5 billion fortune to fund various arts organisations, including the national art gallery, the West Australian Ballet and West Australian Opera.
Baldock’s inheritance of one-quarter of her grandfather’s company has also stood her in good stead, with an extensive property portfolio which includes London House.
Their aunt Bennett, however, has been the largest beneficiary of her father’s iron ore exploits, with an estimated net worth of almost $4 billion.
She and other parties involved in the buy-out scheme, including agents Douglas Salt and Carnegie Fieldhouse, have denied knowing Peter had a personal beneficial interest in the mining tenements at the time it was signed.
And the stakes have been heightened in recent weeks, with Wright Prospecting refreshing a 50-year-old joint venture deal with Rio Tinto to develop a new iron ore mine at Rhodes Ridge; a move that could see the company’s annual profit increase four-fold.
Julian’s high-profile Sydney barrister Ben Kremer pored over swathes of documentation from the time of the deal which he claimed demonstrated Julian’s siblings and their agents knew about the royalty entitlements.
During the five-day hearing, the court was shown an alleged direction from Michael to Salt in December 1985 which mentioned “the possible demise of Wright Prospecting’s royalties”, sent just months after Salt was appointed to negotiate Julian’s exit and find a suitable buy-out price.
The court was shown a letter, alleged to have been penned by Michael and sent to Bennett, discussing royalty arbitration with Hamersley Iron, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, under which it was obliged to pay Peter’s descendants, as executors of his estate, a royalty.
Julian attended the court hearings. And so, too, did those rumoured to be helping to bankroll his latest court bid.
The defendants’ lawyer Kristina Stern told the court the case was lacking any clear evidence those involved in the deal had knowledge of Peter’s beneficial interest in the royalty pacts.
She told the court Kremer’s submissions were little more than inferences to information the defendants may have gleaned from documents produced at the time and in the absence of concrete evidence, the claim should fail.
“The stark fact is that there is not one document that shows any evidence that Mr Salt, Mr Fieldhouse, Angela or Michael knew that Peter had a beneficial interest in those royalties,” she said.
“In the absence of any clear evidence, the statements made [by the defendants] should be taken as fact.
“It’s clear that none who saw or signed [the documents] had any belief Peter’s estate had a beneficial interest.
“The previous judgment found that everyone believed that, under the 1978 agreement, all royalties belonged to the Hancock partnership.
“This is the evidence of what they knew, what is being put to the court is a reprehensible assessment of their conduct.
“The claims of fraud are coming from indirect inferences and they must fail unless they can demonstrate this.”
The Court of Appeal has reserved its decision, which is not anticipated to be handed down until well into the new year.
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