Rinehart loses court secrecy bid
The last veil of secrecy over the multibillion-dollar Hancock feud lifted yesterday when Gina Rinehart lost her battle to keep private extraordinary allegations that question the source of more than 75 per cent of her wealth.
The Federal Court decision to lift a suppression order came despite her plea that key projects could be harmed.
After the decision, Hancock Prospecting called the court case an abuse of process and an attempt to air baseless allegations.
The company had to "waste precious time defending these extremely irresponsible, selfish and inconsiderate claims". "I feel parents everywhere cringe at this scene, watching extremely privileged children suing to get even more money unearned by them after their mother's lifetime of hard work," it said.
The move exposes key claims central to the decade-long series of battles with her children: that they believe her wealth was built on assets meant for them.
Mrs Rinehart's older children John and Bianca allege their mother defrauded them of billions of dollars in mining profits.
Their allegations are rooted in a 1988 agreement between their mother and late grandfather Lang Hancock in which assets now worth billions were set aside for them and their two sisters.
They claim their mother reneged on the agreement when their grandfather died.
They say she used her position as trustee to remove "all valuable mining assets" from the trust set up for them and transfer them to Hancock Prospecting in which she had shares.
They claim she stopped a trust subsidiary buying valuable exploration licences over Roy Hill tenements, which she also falsely claimed to discover, so Hancock Prospecting could buy them.
And they claim she circumvented the agreement with her father by engineering a situation to redistribute shares in Hancock Prospecting to boost her stake from 51 to 76.55 per cent and reduce her children's share from 49 to 23.45 per cent. The documents claim the children, aged 2-12 when their mother and grandfather made the agreement, were vulnerable minors unable to protect their interests at the time.
They say Mrs Rinehart later "pressured and misled" Bianca and John to sign a deed under which they agreed never to challenge her past actions.
The action is separate to one over control of the family trust.
