Sibling emails reveal battle for Rinehart family trust

afr.com:

Private emails between some of Gina Rinehart’s children discussing extraordinary plans to mount a legal bid against their mother almost 20 years ago have been aired in the WA Supreme Court in a high-stakes legal battle over billions of dollars in mining royalties.

Emails between John Hancock and his sister Hope Rinehart were read out on Tuesday by a lawyer representing DFD Rhodes, which is seeking a 1.25 per cent cut of royalties flowing from Hancock Prospecting’s Hope Downs mines in the Hamersley Ranges.

WA’s trial of the century: Left to right: Bianca Rinehart, Gina Rinehart, Angela Bennett, Peter Wright, Lang Hancock and John Hancock. -

DFD Rhodes barrister Jeremy Stoljar showed the court an email John Hancock sent his sister Hope on 26 September, 2006, outlining a litigation strategy against their mother over aspects of a lucrative family trust.

A back-and-forth between John Hancock and Hope Rinehart was later forwarded by Hope to her older sister Bianca, who appeared to have forwarded the entire correspondence about the children’s legal strategy to an email address understood to belong to their mother, Mr Stoljar said.

“That’s all that was there, I’ll have to wait for idiot John to reply to her before I can see if she sent anything else, I’ll keep checking,” Bianca Rinehart emailed her mother in early October, 2006.

The internal correspondence sheds new light on the internal family battle between Mrs Rinehart and some of her children, which has dragged on for over a decade.

The contents of the correspondence between John Hancock and Hope Rinehart was largely made up of a plan to mount a legal challenge against their mother after she had allegedly removed the Hope Downs mine from their family trust, the court heard.