CLIVE Palmer’s companies are demanding a court order to remove FTI Consulting as liquidators of Queensland Nickel, claiming they have a personal animosity against him, sought to politically embarrass him and that their fees were too high.
The legal gambit lodged in the Supreme Court this week seeks to have a new liquidator put in place, despite Mr Palmer’s companies having appointed FTI as administrators in the first place.
An FTI spokesman said the claims had no merit and would be disputed “vigorously”.
Correspondence filed in the court shows lawyers for the businessman’s companies make a series of allegations against FTI’s John Park and the administrator’s report, which was damning in its assessment of the way QN was run by Mr Palmer and his nephew Clive Mensink.
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READ NOW“Mr Park comments in respect of Mr Palmer utilising QN as a ‘piggy bank’ ... His comments are made in a vacuum designed to mislead,” the letter stated. “(Certain) facts were known to Mr Park and he deliberately left them out of his report to politically embarrass Mr Palmer, mislead creditors and seek $5 million for his services acting as a liquidator on top of the $4.5 million of Joint Venture funds he had already improperly charged.”
Another letter filed with the court claimed “Mr Palmer personally and his companies have never received one dollar from Queensland Nickel’s funds, never has any person employed ever been dismissed and were any workers entitlements refused by Mr Palmer”.
There were 237 workers made redundant from QN just days before the administrators were appointed in January, employees were owed $73 million in unpaid entitlements, while the administrator’s report estimated $224.3 million of QN’s funds were transferred to director-related parties, or paid by QN on behalf of the director-related parties.
The application requests QN’s existing special purpose liquidators, or another group, be appointed as the new general purpose liquidators.