If you ever wanted to know what the dark side of a proposed Titanic replica, an arson-struck dinosaur, and an ungodly-large vintage car collection looks like… well, here it is. This is what happens when Clive Palmer’s propensity for drawing funds from his former company Queensland Nickel for frivolous nonsense catches up to him: the company officially goes busto, leaving hundreds of non-millionaires out of a job.
At a meeting today in
Townsville, creditors – including a strong contingent of axed workers – voted to liquidate the company. That was the expected outcome of the meeting, after a report from earlier this month found the very,
very mismanaged company a
stonking $771 million in debt; the body who ran that report also claim Palmer used the company as a
“personal piggy bank”, siphoning $15 million to himself in the past few years.
Now, those sacked workers are technically entitled to $70 million in funds. That being said, the
Federal Government’s failsafe workers’ entitlement scheme will cough up the majority of that figure. Those funds could still take six weeks to reach their accounts, which is a bloody long time considering some of the refinery’s former workers are currently relying on donated food hampers.
The bright side? Well, liquidators can now come after Palmer for debts owed, too. There’s also the more-than-zero chance the one-time political firebrand could end up in the slammer over his antics, which you can read about in detail riiiight here. For the moment though, bye, Clive, bye bye.
Source: ABC.
Photo: Stefan Postles / Getty.
