Gina Rinehart inked “death warrant” deals for the lucrative trust fund her pioneer father left her four children, stripping it of its mining assets, wrestling back its stake in her company and leaving it “frozen in time”, a court has been told.
But within two years the trust was in a “precarious” financial position, one Withers said Gina manufactured through a series of top-secret manoeuvres that left it beholden to her. Withers said the series of transactions were effectively a death warrant to the trust, strangling its access to funding, stopping its exploration quests and preventing it from repaying its debts.
“As the controlling mind of Hancock Prospecting, she [Gina] would have been in conflict if she demanded the debt as it would have harmed the assets of the trust, which she had a duty to safeguard and protect as trustee, including the economic value of the assets to be generated within it,” Withers told the court.
“These deeds were effectively a death warrant to these companies... and left the trust an empty shell.The version of events is at odds with that put by Hancock Prospecting’s lawyer Noel Hutley, SC, who told the court last week Lang confessed to unlawfully taking the company’s assets before his death and reinstated Gina as a director.
The stoush began in 2010 when Gina was sued by the descendants of her pioneer father’s business partner, Peter Wright, her eldest children and the company left behind by Pilbara engineer Don Rhodes.
Business Business Latest News, Business Business Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: theage - 🏆 8. / 77 Read more »
Source: smh - 🏆 6. / 80 Read more »