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Well, it looks like Andrew Forrest has learned a thing or two indeed from his paymasters in China. Not just how to literally sell your country to a foreign power, or how to undermine your own, democratically elected government by toadying to the bully-boys of communist dictatorships.
Now, his company, Fortescue Metals, is going in for the good-old secret police approach to corporate dissidents.
A bunch of former Fortescue executives left the company in 2022 and started up a company named Element Zero. Their goal was “green metal”; that is, taking the carbon emissions out of iron and steel manufacture.
The thing is, Fortescue is trying to develop similar technology. Forrest is accusing his former employees of stealing intellectual property. (Oh, the irony, from someone whose customer is China.)
Enter the spies.
Fortescue detectives spied on family shopping trips to Kmart, rummaged through mail and watched the wives and children of former executives for 19 days, the Federal Court has heard.
Further details about the iron ore giant’s efforts to monitor its green steel rivals, Element Zero, and their executives Bart Kolodziejczyk and Bjorn Winther-Jensen before launching raids on their homes over allegations they stole intellectual property were revealed on Wednesday.
The spying was truly mind-boggling. The report provided to Fortescue contains details such as that the private spooks followed “wives to Kmart”, sniffed through mail “and the like”, and that other Element Zero staff who weren’t listed in the court filings were also spied on. The report also includes residential addresses and photos of children. Fortescue’s lawyers said those were “too difficult” to redact.
Even the judge is telling them to lay off.
Federal Court Judge Brigitte Markovic also told Fortescue’s lawyers they should revise the “ambit” of their broad suppression order requests, including an attempt to keep the entire 600 pages of a report produced by private investigators secret.
For his part, Forrest is claiming innocent ignorance.
Following the revelations in the court hearing, Fortescue’s executive chairman Andrew Forrest issued a statement saying his company’s external legal team “have been reminded” about complying with Fortescue’s values.
Maybe they thought they were?
Dr Kolodziejczyk and Dr Winther-Jensen – former Fortescue executives – and their company Element Zero along with long-term Andrew Forrest lieutenant Michael Masterman are parties to the court fight.
All three quit the would-be green energy giant to start their own green metal company in 2022.
After Fortescue accused of them of stealing intellectual property relating to its carbon dioxide free iron technology, and they successfully obtained orders from the Federal Court in May to search the offices and homes of Element Zero and its staff and to seize computers and electronic devices in raids.
Element Zero deny the allegations and say their technology was developed independently to that of Fortescue’s.
Forrest also appears to have learned a thing or two about secrecy.
Such has been the veil of secrecy cast over the case, its existence was not revealed until two weeks after the search orders were granted (on May 14) and elements of the matter are still suppressed.
The Australian
Element Zero are asking for the entire report to be redacted.
They should probably just be grateful they weren’t disappeared, like Jack Ma.
