Australia’s High Court grants Fortescue leave to appeal against ASIC

Australian miner Fortescue Metals Group (Fortescue) has announced that the Australian High Court has granted Fortescue leave to appeal the Full Federal Court decision dated February 18, 2011 in the civil penalty proceedings brought by Australia's corporate regulator Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) against Fortescue and Fortescue's chairman Andrew Forrest.
 
Fortescue and Mr. Forrest requested to appeal the Federal Court decision to allow ASIC's appeal against the original judgment in favor of Fortescue and Mr. Forrest on December 23, 2009. The hearing date of the High Court Appeal has not been revealed yet.
 
As SteelOrbis previously reported, ASIC had alleged that Fortescue made misleading and deceptive statements about agreements with three Chinese enterprises which the company termed binding contracts when actually this was not the case.