‘Witch hunt’: Palmer slams court after charge dropped

Mining magnate and former prime ministerial aspirant Clive Palmer has slammed prosecutors after a charge alleging he had breached takeover laws was dropped.

Palmer was charged with aiding and abetting a breach of the Corporations Act after a proposed buyout of a group of timeshare investors making up part of the former Hyatt Regency Coolum golf resort on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

The mining magnate’s company Palmer Leisure Coolum took over the resort in the early 2010s and allegedly offered to buy out the timeshare investors, known as The President’s Club.

But an offer for those securities was not made within the required two-month period, the corporate watchdog alleged in 2018.

After a near-decade-long legal battle, Palmer Leisure Coolum pleaded guilty in June and was fined $10,000 on October 27.

A Commonwealth prosecutor told a Brisbane magistrate on Monday it would not proceed with the charge against Palmer.

The charge was withdrawn.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Mr Palmer said: “These charges were a political witch hunt, a waste of time, and came at huge expense to Australian taxpayers.”

Palmer and Palmer Leisure Coolum applied to have the charges permanently stayed in 2018.

When that was unsuccessful, he took the case to the High Court in 2020, which declined to intervene.

The billionaire remains embroiled in a separate, long-running legal stoush with the corporate watchdog.

In 2020, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission hit Palmer with multiple charges, including fraud, over a $12 million transfer between another of his companies, Mineralogy, and the now-defunct Palmer United Party.

The commission alleges in 2013 Mr Palmer illegally authorised the transfer to fund his party’s federal election campaign in 2013.

On September 7, Palmer argued that the case was a breach of his human rights and that he was being charged for his political beliefs.

The case has been adjourned.

AAP has contacted the watchdog and the Commonwealth prosecutor for comment.

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