Gina ‘special project devalued children’s assets’

afr.com:

A once-confidential memo written by Gina Rinehart about a “special project” she was undertaking has been used by lawyers to accuse her of an egregious breach of fiduciary duties and signing the death warrant for a company set up by her father Lang Hancock.

A lawyer representing Mrs Rinehart’s two eldest children laid out a multifaceted plan he alleged the mining magnate undertook to devalue assets in a company associated with her family, before she transferred them to Hancock Prospecting, which she controlled.

Gina and Bianca Rinehart this week. Trevor Collens

Christopher Withers, SC, told the WA Supreme Court on Wednesday Mrs Rinehart’s actions in the mid-1990s after her father’s death amounted to a gross breach of duty to her children.

“It’s hard to imagine a more egregious breach of duty,” Mr Withers said.

“It is not surprising that Gina did not want this document to see the light of day, for obvious reasons.”

The 1994 memo to Price Waterhouse revealed Mrs Rinehart was seeking to “deflate” the share value that the Hancock Family Memorial Trust (HFMF) held in Hancock Prospecting (HPPL), Mr Withers said.

“There must be a way to show methods were used to put funds into HFMF by bleeding HPPL so that the undesirable happened, so that HFMF were able to acquire one-third of HPPL shareholding in 1989. This is what we now wish to undo,” Mrs Rinehart wrote.

At that time HFMF held valuable tenements that now cover the Hope Downs mining project, which is at the centre of the months-long court battle between two of Australia’s richest mining families.

Descendants of Hancock’s business partner, Peter Wright, are seeking royalties from the mine, and have joined John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart to the trial as co-defendants. John and