Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who lodged an appeal in a WA court, has failed in his bid to overturn a ban over him entering and doing business in Australia.
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who lodged an appeal in a Western Australian court, has failed in his bid to overturn a ban over him entering and doing business in Australia.
The Federal Court today dismissed Mr Deripaska’s appeal and ordered him to pay the foreign affairs minister's costs.
Business News was first to report on Mr Deripaska’s legal action in the Federal Court’s WA registry in 2023, requesting a judicial review of his targeted financial sanctions and travel ban.
Mr Deripaska engaged Subiaco-based law firm Pragma Lawyers and former attorney-general Christian Porter as his legal counsel.
The federal government imposed bans on multiple people during the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, including Mr Deripaska, who reportedly had close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Then foreign affairs minister Marise Payne added Mr Deripaska and another billionaire, Viktor Vekselberg, to the list of 41 oligarchs and immediate family members with financial sanctions and travel bans.
The two billionaires have business ties in Australia, with Mr Deripaska’s Russian company Rusal formerly in a joint venture with Rio Tinto over the Queensland Alumina refinery in Gladstone.
Rio Tinto was the majority shareholder with an 80 per cent stake in the venture.
During a limited AGM in 2022, Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm said the mining giant would cut all commercial relationships with Russian businesses and announced a 100 per cent capacity of Queensland Alumina.
In his legal action, Mr Deripaska claimed the foreign affairs minister’s decision to impose sanctions on him was against the Australian constitution.
The federal court upheld the government’s sanction, prompting Mr Deripaska to lodge an appeal in 2024.
But the appeal was dismissed by a full bench comprising three Federal Court judges this morning, with the decision delivered in NSW despite being in the WA registry.
Among Mr Deripaska’s grounds of appeal was the claim that the minister misunderstood the power she had and assumed her decision would be immune from judicial review.
Mr Deripaska’s legal counsel pointed out that Ms Payne was not called to give evidence at the hearing, claiming it highlighted the misunderstanding.
However, the full bench of the Federal Court found that there was no basis to make that inference against Ms Payne.
In their reasons to dismiss the appeal, the Federal Court judges said Mr Deripaska’s statement to the court did not include the allegation against Ms Payne and the minister had no reason to expect that she acted under any misunderstanding.
“Indeed, it was not even an argument that was advanced before the primary judge,” the judges’ judgment reads.
“It is insufficient for the appellant to rely on a generalised bare assertion that the minister would be expected to call Ms Payne as a witness to defend her decision.
“Even if it could be inferred from the minister’s failure to call Ms Payne that her evidence would not have assisted the minister, it would equally have been open to infer that Ms Payne’s evidence would not have assisted the minister simply because, for the reasons given by the primary judge, she was unlikely to have had any independent recollection of her reasoning process in relation to the appellant.
“That would leave the issue to be determined on the basis of the documents that were before the minister, which, for the reasons given by the primary judge, did not support the inference advanced by the appellant, namely that the minister misunderstood the nature of her powers.
“We doubt that that inference could more easily or readily have been drawn simply because Ms Payne was not called by the minister in all the circumstance.”
Other countries have imposed travel bans or sanctions against Mr Deripaska including the US, UK, and New Zealand.
