Singapore-based coal baron Nathan Tinkler is being pursued by administrators for allegedly allowing one of his companies to trade while insolvent.
Mr Tinkler recently sold several assets, including his Patinack Farm horse-racing empire.
The insolvent trading claims brought by administrator Ferrier Hodgson are centered on one of Mr Tinkler's private companies failing to fulfil a $28.4 million contract to buy a third of junior coal explorer Blackwood Corporation.
The private company in question, Mulsanne Resources, is a vehicle that was set up specifically to acquire shares in Blackwood last year.
Mr Tinkler is a director of the company, along with business partners Matthew Keen and Troy Palmer. Ferrier Hodgson claims all three Mulsanne directors allowed the company to trade while insolvent. Mulsanne agreed in May last year to acquire more than 94.6 million shares in Blackwood for $28.4 million. But it failed to pay the money by the agreed date, and also missed a four-week extension for the payment.
The company was then forced to wind up.
Liquidators conducted a public examination of Mr Tinkler and Mr Keen last month.
Evidence was given by both men that, at the time Mulsanne entered into the share purchase agreement with Blackwood, they believed funding for the deal would flow from the sale of a royalty stream controlled by the Tinkler Group.
They also gave evidence that Mulsanne had no assets of its own, being a special purpose vehicle with a share capital of just $1.
In documents tendered in the NSW Supreme Court on Thursday, Ferrier Hodgson said Mulsanne's directors had no reasonable grounds to believe the company could pay the $28.4 million when the time came to do so.
Mulsanne also did not have a financier lined up to help fund the deal, Ferrier Hodgson said.
"As the company is a company without assets, I am of the opinion that the liquidators need to have recourse to Blackwood's funding to finance completion of the liquidation of the company,'' Ferrier Hodgson partner Robyn Duggan said in an affidavit.
She said that in the next 12 to 18 months, Ferrier Hodgson planned to bring legal action against Mr Tinkler and the other Mulsanne directors for insolvent trading.
The court was closed to the public for half an hour on Thursday while lawyers discussed commercially confidential material.
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