‘Weak as ever’: Emails reveal bitter words in Rinehart family rift
Gina Rinehart’s son John Hancock told his sister Bianca she was “weak” and would “sidle up” to their mother in a bitter dispute over a family trust, in a personal email exchange aired for the first time in a separate fight over mining royalties.
Scores of emails between Mr Hancock and his sister Bianca Rinehart in the mid-2000s were divulged in the West Australian Supreme Court on Thursday in the trial to decide a multipronged dispute over revenue worth billions of dollars.
Gina Rinehart, right, her children John Hancock and Bianca Rinehart, top, and Rose Porteous with Lang Hancock.
The correspondence, aired by lawyers representing DFD Rhodes, a family-owned company seeking royalties generated by Hancock Prospecting’s Hope Downs mines, revealed John Hancock was preparing a legal challenge against his mother in 2004 and 2005. In it, he allegedly boasted to his sister of using business and political pressure Ms Rinehart was under to leverage “hitting her up” for millions of dollars.
John Hancock had accused his mother of removing the lucrative Hope Downs tenements from the family trust, which his lawyers said in 2004 correspondence was acting in “staggering conflict” with the trust.
The new information came to light at the end of the second week of the trial pitting Ms Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting against the descendants of her father’s business partner Peter Wright, who are seeking billions in unpaid Hope Down royalties. DFD Rhodes is also seeking 1.25 per cent of the cash.
A May 2004 email titled “Babysitting” shows Mr Hancock criticising his sister for appearing to pull back from engaging in the legal fight to challenge their mother’s position as the head of the family trust.
“I’m disappointed, Bianca, about your
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