How ANZ helped the Oswals set up in a ‘$314m’ Swiss palace

afr.com:

Leaked settlement deeds reveal just how far ANZ bank had to go to end one of Australia’s most high-profile court claims stemming from a spectacular corporate receivership.

High-profile Perth entrepreneurs Pankaj and Radhika Oswal extracted $169 million from ANZ bank in the 2016 settlement, according to documents leaked from Cypriot firms, which also reveal the bank helped pay their outstanding taxes. It ended a legal dispute that had dragged on for years and run into billions of dollars.

Radhika and Panjak Oswal outside the Victorian Supreme Court in 2016 during their fight with ANZ. Jason South

The ANZ payments also helped generate a new start for the Oswals, who had been forced to abandon their unfinished $70 million Perth mansion that had been dubbed “Taj on Swan”. They have since gone on to acquire a home in Switzerland that enthusiastic Indian media articles say is worth at least $US200 million ($314 million).

The Oswals were entrepreneurs behind an ammonia plant, touted as the world’s largest, on WA’s Burrup Peninsula. Originally from India, the pair arrived in Perth in the early 2000s and made an instant impression with lavish spending and parties, including one at which rocker Jimmy Barnes sang.

It all came crashing down in 2010 when bankers ANZ appointed receivers.

The Oswals later claimed the receivers, PPB, had sold the business too cheaply at $580 million. It triggered explosive legal claims that dragged through the courts for years before new ANZ chief executive Shayne Elliott signed off on a confidential settlement in 2016.

But the leaked documents, obtained by The Australian Financial Review in the Cyprus Confidential project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and Germany’s