Wealthy businessman Clive Palmer has been slammed for using the legal system to delay the corporate watchdog’s attempts to bring him to justice.

June 4, 2019

Billionaire businessman Clive Palmer has been blasted in court for his “concerning abuse” of the legal system to block criminal charges being brought against him for breaching the corporations act in Queensland.

Mr Palmer copped the broadside on Tuesday during his appeal against the Supreme Court’s decision not to intervene in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission case.

During his submission to a full bench of the Queensland Court of Appeal, Australian Government Solicitor Senior General Counsel Tim Begbie slammed Mr Palmer’s successful use of “multiple litigious steps” to disrupt the legal proceedings.

“The interference, the multiplicity, the bringing of applications in the Magistrate’s Court and the Supreme Court,” Mr Begbie said on behalf of his client’s, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions and ASIC.

“And (then) dropping the Supreme Court and commencing a new one, and Mr Palmer getting out of that one and commencing his own one.”

Mr Begbie said regardless of whether each of the proceedings was successful or withdrawn, they had delayed the committal proceedings for more than a year.

“(And) that is where the concern lies because these applications and multiple litigious steps have been effective,” he said.

“(The ASIC case) has progressed absolutely nowhere and that is the way abuse arises from the multiplicity.”

ASIC alleges Mr Palmer encouraged his company Palmer Leisure Coolum to buy shares of another company that owned properties at his Sunshine Coast resort in 2012.

Under corporations’ law, Mr Palmer was required to make an offer within two months of announcing his intentions but failed to do so.

Palmer Leisure Coolum Pty Ltd has also been charged with proposing or announcing a bid then failing to make an offer within the required time.

Mr Palmer sought the Brisbane Supreme Court’s intervention in January, claiming an abuse of process.

He argued there had been a delay in the proceedings and alleged authorities laying the charges had been influenced by the federal government and persuaded to prosecute him and his company for an improper purpose.

Justice Soraya Ryan ordered his claims be set aside.

“I find nothing exceptional about the plaintiffs’ circumstances such as to warrant the interference in the criminal proceedings which they claim,” she wrote in her judgment at the time.

An application to the Magistrates Court to have the case dismissed on the grounds it was an abuse of court process was also previously refused.

On Tuesday, the Queensland Court of Appeal heard arguments against the Supreme Court decision.

Palmer Leisure Coolum lawyer Dr Christopher Ward SC told the court Justice Ryan has failed to properly consider the matter.

“The prosecution of my client is nothing more than a device to enable the prosecution of the individual director,” he said.

Mr Palmer and his personal lawyers were not present in the court.

The Court of Appeal reserved its decision until Wednesday.