Govt moving towards Bell Group settlement

The state government has confirmed it is in talks to reach a settlement that would end the long-standing dispute over the $1.7 billion of litigation proceeds from Alan Bond’s failed Bell Group.

In response to speculation that a deal had been struck to divide up the money, Treasurer Ben Wyatt said the government was actively seeking a resolution.

“There is certainly a lot of effort going into, at the moment, trying to resolve or find a way forward to settlement,” he said.

Mr Wyatt said it was too early to know what the cost of a settlement would be for taxpayers.

“What I’m interested in trying to get for taxpayers is hopefully an end to a very expensive, very ongoing litigation,” he said.

“The cheques that we write to law firms for this is just extraordinary.”

The Bell Group went into receivership in 1991.

In 2017, it was revealed that since 1995 the Insurance Commission of Western Australia had spent around $250 million related to legal action against the syndicate of banks who put the company into receivership.

In 2016, the state government appointed two US-based law firms, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and Jones Day, to represent the Insurance Commission.