PERTH, Australia — Asia’s richest woman says that she doesn’t want her kids to inherit her fortune because she thinks that they are spoiled, and that has kicked off a massive court fight in Australia.
According to the report in Bloomberg Businessweek, the four adult children of 58-year-old mining heiress Gina Rinehart are suing their mother over control of the family’s trust – worth an estimated $4.7 billion. The children accuse their mother of misconduct by threatening their financial ruin, giving them a single day to sign an accord extending her control of the trust and lying to them in a bid to sign the agreement.
Rinehart inherited iron ore mining assets from her father and has an agreement with Rio Tinto Group under which she collects royalties on properties in Western Australia mined by Rio. She agreed in August to sell coal projects in Queensland for $2.2 billion.
Her wealth has more than doubled in the past year, as soaring demand for coal and iron ore from China has made her mining assets more valuable, Bloomberg reports.
“Bankruptcy is not in the financial interests of the beneficiaries,” Rinehart wrote in an e-mail urging the children to accept the new agreement, reports Bloomberg. “It may however be reasonably arguable that personal development-wise it would be in the best interests of the beneficiaries to force them to go to work and reconsider their holidaying lifestyles and attitudes.”
Click here for more on this story from Bloomberg Businessweek.
