SYDNEY, Dec 19: A senior media adviser for Australian lawmaker Clive Palmer, whose party holds the balance of power in the Senate, has been detained as part of an investigation into the alleged kidnapping of a bank executive on an Indonesian island, local media reported today.
Queensland Police confirmed that two men had been arrested in Brisbane and a warrant was out for a third person who is not currently in Australia as part of an investigation by a taskforce looking into financial crime.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) said the three were alleged to have lured the National Australia Bank executive to Singapore and on to Batam Island in Indonesia using the pretence of a possible job offer from mining magnate Palmer. Once there, the executive was strip searched, threatened and forced to make a statement recanting evidence he was providing in a A70 million dollars civil case, the broadcaster said. Palmer confirmed his media adviser Andrew Crook had been detained but said he knew nothing of the case. The ABC reported that a third warrant was issued for Australian Football League player Tony Smith who lives in Bali and who was involved in the civil suit. The police statement said the charges stem ‘from an elaborate scheme which police will allege was planned partly in Queensland with key elements executed in Singapore and Indonesia before returning to Queensland where the offences were committed’. Palmer has been a major figure in Australian politics over the past year. His Palmer United Party (PUP) holds the balance of power in the Senate, giving him leverage over Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s government on several key issues. Palmer is also embroiled in a legal dispute with China’s Citic Pacific over the Chinese company’s mining rights to the 9.6 billion dollars Sino Iron Project in Western Australia. (AGENCIES)
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