Billionaire businessman Clive Palmer has appealed to the high court in a bid to halt criminal proceedings involving alleged fraud and dishonesty.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic) filed complaints against Palmer and his Leisure Coolum resort in 2018 and 2020 alleging breaches of the criminal code, including that Palmer dishonestly used his position as a director of Mineralogy Pty Ltd to benefit the Palmer United party.
Palmer, who has denied any wrongdoing, has unsuccessfully asked the Queensland supreme court and the state’s court of appeal to stop the prosecutions.
One set of charges relates to a proposal to buy out investors in timeshare villas at Palmer’s Coolum resort, in south-east Queensland, which did not eventuate. Asic alleged Palmer and his company were required to make a takeover bid within two months of announcing it but failed to do so.
In another matter, Palmer was also charged in 2020 with two counts of dishonestly using his position as a director and fraudulently gaining a benefit relating to his transfer of more than $12m through his company Mineralogy between 5 August and 5 September 2013.
Asic alleges Palmer transferred the money to bank accounts held by Media Circus and Cosmo Developments ultimately for the benefit of the Palmer United party to fund its 2013 federal election campaign.
In an application for special leave to appeal to the high court, filed on Tuesday, Palmer argues that the criminal proceedings relate to interparty transactions and purport “to controvert findings made in earlier civil proceedings relating to the same transaction involving the same parties”.
In earlier civil cases, Palmer has argued that Mineralogy was entitled to receive payment from the bank account as its own money and to pay money out for its own purposes.
Palmer rejected the court of appeal’s reasoning that there were “circumstantial matters … which point to dishonesty”.
“The fact that the monies [sic] were contributed ‘on the promise that it would be used for port management services’ is not probative of dishonesty; it is merely a description of the parties’ contractual affairs,” Palmer’s application said.
“The fact that ‘Mineralogy recorded the impugned payments as being for port management services, when they were not’ is not probative of dishonesty.”
Addressing a supreme court hearing in February 2022, Palmer said the fraud and misconduct charges were “an abuse of process”. He also claimed the Asic complaint and magistrates court proceeding “were unlawful” and did not take into account his human rights.
In February 2024 the court of appeal’s Justice Jean Dalton said Palmer had failed to demonstrate that either prosecution “was doomed to fail”.
In a decision approved by the two other judges, Dalton said the delay caused by attempts to permanently stay criminal proceedings “were an abuse of the process of this court because they interfered with the proper administration of criminal justice according to law”.
