IN Clive Palmer’s mind, there is a trivial legal case unfolding in Brisbane. The Palmer United Party founder describes this Supreme Court case, its allegations, evidence, and the stories arising from it as a monstrous beat-up, a non-event, and a silly conspiracy. It’s the fault of those bastards and mongrels in China and News Corp Australia, overseen by wicked Rupert Murdoch, cops and rival politicians. In the real world, the parallel universe of judge David Jackson’s Court 21, something else is unfolding. The lawyers in there treat this case as gravely serious. Palmer tells journalists the evidence of what he has done — and even what he has wholly admitted, in his own legal documents, that he has done — is “completely untrue”. Meanwhile, his lawyers are making major concessions and admissions about his conduct over more than $12 million, and treating Court 21 as a confessional. Yesterday, words such as “dishonest”, “fraudulent” and “illegitimate” were being bandied around Court 21, without objection, by Palmer’s pursuers — the lawyers for China’s overseas-investment company — to describe the way he spent Beijing’s funds on his personal interests. These included the PUP ($6m); its Brisbane advertising agency, Media Circus Network, for the federal election campaign (about $4m); and even American Express (just shy of $100,000). Much of this case has been firmly established already by the cheques, bank account statements and financial instructions, and admissions from Palmer and his staff. This material clearly describes what he did with $12.167m of the $23m in cash that Beijing had deposited, when he did it, and even how he did it. How, for example, in late July last year (as the PUP was gearing up for the federal election), he instructed the removal of the two other co-signatories for the bank account for the Port of Cape Preston, leaving himself as the account’s sole operator. How, days later, he opened an account for a dormant company he controlled, Cosmo Developments, and became sole signatory. How, a few days later, he transferred $10m from the Port of Cape Preston bank account to the Cosmo account. And how, on the same day in August that he put the $10m into the Cosmo account, he withdrew $6m of it from Cosmo and gifted it to the PUP. There were references yesterday to something that bears an unmistakable taint of “fabrication” and the smell of something the dog deposited, the “Port Management Services Agreement”. This is the document Palmer has admitted he created in April or May this year, despite having falsely backdated it to June last year, in an alleged attempt to justify his withdrawals. Unsurprisingly, Palmer “no longer relies on this defence” — which the Chinese have called a complete “sham”. There were, said barrister Andrew Bell SC for the Chinese, “powerful inferences of dishonesty” to be drawn from a document that was “retrospectively dreamt up”. Palmer now seeks to “run a mile” from it. This case looks bad. Unless Palmer can pull a rabbit out of the hat, its evidence will likely also influence the West Australian and Queensland major fraud squads. theaustralian.au/opinion/clive-palmers-parallel-universe-a-tale-of-two-cases/story-e6frg6zo-1227136229561
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 03:23:53 +0000
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