Billionaire Andrew Forrest’s firm Fortescue employed non-public investigators to spy on former staff and their relations, together with kids, for weeks earlier than raids occurred on their houses and places of work, amid allegations of stolen mental property.
Fortescue has taken authorized motion within the Federal Court in opposition to three former staff: Michael Masterman, Bart Kolodziejczyk and additionally Bjorn Winther-Jensen. It has accused the lads of copying and taking the corporate’s mental property once they left to start out a rival inexperienced iron challenge, known as Element Zero.
Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue has taken authorized motion within the Federal Court in opposition to three former staff.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The males have denied the allegations. Masterman, who’s Element Zero’s chief government, has known as Fortescue’s claims “spurious” and mentioned that their “green metals technology was developed independently of and is very different from anything that Fortescue is doing or has done in this space”.
Fortescue secured court orders to raid the places of work and houses of the lads from mid-May. An unbiased lawyer was current, and a pc knowledgeable was allowed to look and copy any digital gadgets, together with relations’ computer systems, whereas additionally being required handy over all passwords and passcodes.
Documents launched by the Federal Court late on Wednesday, which have been beforehand suppressed, revealed {that a} psychologist was required to attend if a baby was current throughout the raids.
In the weeks earlier than these raids, which stretched from Victoria to Western Australia, non-public investigators have been employed to spy on and path Kolodziejczyk and additionally Winther-Jensen, and present a report back to unbiased legal professionals. The legal professionals required that report earlier than a search warrant from the Federal Court might be obtained.
Former Fortescue executives Bart Kolodziejczyk (left) and Michael Masterman.Credit: Eamon Gallagher
The extent of that spying within the investigator’s report included pictures and Google Maps photographs of each males’s non-public residences, flooring plans, and additionally pictures of their wives and kids.
Kolodziejczyk, a former hydrogen specialist at Fortescue Future Industries, who lives in Melbourne along with his spouse and five-year-old youngster, travels steadily to Perth, the place Element Zero is headquartered.