Businessman, dinosaur magnate, and former Federal politician Clive Palmer has been formally charged with fraud.
Palmer has been slapped with two counts of dishonest use of a position as a director, and a further two counts of fraud by dishonestly gaining a benefit or advantage.
Those charges stem from the use of his position as a company director, and directly involve the funding of his Palmer United Party political platform.
Following an investigation by the Australian Securities and Exchange Commission, allegations are now being levelled that Palmer improperly transferred funds between companies in the lead up to the 2013 Federal Election, in which Palmer was subsequently handed a seat in the lower house.
The allegations claim that, between August 5th 2013 and September 5th 2013, Palmer used his dishonestly obtained advantages for several of his companies – including Cosmo Developments and the Palmer United Party itself – by authorising the transfer of $10 million from Mineralogy, which Palmer also owned and was a director for. That money, it’s claimed, was being held by Mineralogy for other purposes.
ASIC’s allegations claim that $2 million was dishonestly transferred to Media Circus, another Palmer-owned entity, that was running Palmer’s wildly expensive, advertising-heavy political campaign at the time. Media Circus was subsequently sold off in 2016 and was shut down not long after.
If found guilty, Palmer faces a possible sentence of a $340,000 fine or five years imprisonment. However it’s possible that he could be facing as much as 12 years’ jail if aggravating factors are found as well. That sentence represents the maximum that the charges carried at the time the alleged offending took place.
So there you go!
