The mining company of Gina Rinehart, Australia's wealthiest person, has been ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the descendants of her late father's business partner. The decision, delivered Wednesday by a Western Australia Supreme Court judge, ends a 13-year battle involving the descendants of Peter Wright, who argued Rinehart had blocked them from mining rights and a share of royalties from Hope Downs, one of the country's biggest iron ore projects, per the BBC. Rinehart inherited Hancock Prospecting from her father, Lang Hancock, before signing a 2005 agreement with a Rio Tinto subsidiary to develop the co-owned mining project in Western Australia's Pilbara region.
The case turned on a 1960s-era agreement between Hancock and Wright to manage their iron ore interests through a joint venture called Hanwright. Wright's descendants argued they were entitled to half of the 2.5% royalty paid by Rio Tinto to Hancock for the Hopes Downs mines—and the court agreed, though it rejected broader claims to the underlying mining rights, which remain under Rinehart's control. Hancock estimates the royalties at $14 million a year, meaning that with past royalties included, Wright's descendants could receive $220 million from Hancock, plus more from Rio Tinto, per the Guardian.
Justice Jennifer Smith also partially granted a separate royalties bid from the family of engineer Don Rhodes, but declined to rule on the claims of mining rights by two of Rinehart's children, who'd accused their mother of trying to limit their inheritance. She found Rinehart and her father had agreed to a plan to leave 51% of the company to Rinehart and 49% to her children, which doesn't appear to have been followed. Rinehart now controls 76.55% of the company, with her children owning the rest. Deciding the matter was irrelevant to the Hope Downs case, Smith suggested the conflict should be resolved through private arbitration, the Guardian reports.
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