Clive Palmer

Mr Palmer has donated $US4.5 million to the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation since 2000. Flamboyant mining mogul Clive Palmer is back with a bang. He returns to the list of Australia’s 50 richest for the first time since 2014 with an estimated fortune of $1.8 billion, placing him at No. 20. It’s also his debut as a billionaire, thanks to court-ordered royalty payments from CITIC Pacific Mining’s huge Sino Iron project in Western Australia. The Federal Court has ­ordered Mr Palmer to attend a hearing on May 9 2017 into the collapse of his company Queensland Nickel with debts of about $300 million and the loss of about 800 jobs. Mr Palmer’s lawyers have written to the Turnbull government’s liquidators to tell them that Mr Palmer has to be in the US on May 7 2017. He is not a director of the JFK Library, but he is a director since 2010 of the JFK Library Foundation, a non-profit organisation that relies on philanthropy to support and staff the presidential library and museum.