Andrew Forrest invokes WWII by smashing alleged Element Zero conduct amid court stoush

Andrew Forrest has smashed his company’s former scientists and their decision to start a rival green hydrogen business, claiming their departure from Fortescue was like the nazis’ devastating exit from Poland in World War II.

Fortescue is pursuing Malaga-headquartered Element Zero and three former Fortescue senior workers in the Federal Court over hotly-contested claims of “industrial-scale misuse” of the mining giant’s technology.

Former Fortescue scientists Dr Bart Kolodziejczyk and Bjorn Winther-Jensen, as well as vanquished Andrew Forrest wing-man Michael Masterman, are all being sued. Dr Kolodziejczyk and Mr Masterman are both directors of Element Zero.

Mr Forrest had some strong words for the defendants over their alleged conduct.

“You’re not going to work on a whole heap of technology with a whole heap of other people, where the company’s taking a great deal of risk backing technology, which was not developed by people who left and then have them email all that technology to an entity which we’re not aware of,” he said.

“Then worse, in a kind of Hitler-esque pulling out of Poland burn all the bridges as you go, deleting all that information … I mean that is just not on.

“I mean, we take risks. Everyone who works here takes a risk not to see that reward stolen, so we will prosecute that to the full extent of the law.

“And that’s what’s happened, in our view. Don’t be surprised with the strong reaction.”

Element Zero is vigorously defending the legal claims from Fortescue that it stole the technology.

A spokesman for Element Zero said the company would not be “drawn into responding to these comments” from Mr Forrest.

“We look forward to these matters being determined through the court process,” the spokesman said.

In documents released by the Federal Court last week, Element Zero said Dr Kolodziejczyk was told by Fortescue intellectual property boss Matthew Roper the departing scientist should delete everything saved on his company laptop before returning it.

Mr Roper allegedly said the company had copies of the documents on its main system.

Element Zero also claimed Fortescue never raised concerns about the alleged destruction of documents in commercial discussions that continued until January this year.

The court stoush took a twist earlier this month when it was revealed that Fortescue had hired private investigators to spy on the families of the defendants, including following them to Kmart and sifting through their mail.

On Wednesday Fortescue announced 700 jobs would be axed from its global workforce and the company’s executive team would be reshuffled.

Amid the raft of changes, Phil McKeiver will step down as company secretary but remains as Fortescue’s general counsel.

Mr Forrest said the bitter legal battle had nothing to do with the job cuts on a broader level and in the grand scheme of Fortescue’s business was a “rounding error”.

But following the fallout of the Element Zero spying revelations, Mr Forrest said Mr McKeiver offered to resign as the company’s general counsel in “recent days”, but that offer was rejected by Fortescue’s chief executive Dino Otranto and Fortescue Energy chief Mark Hutchinson.

“In line with the value we have of character, of humility, our (general counsel) did resign,” Mr Forrest said.

“And the CEOs elected to reject that resignation . . . they took the view Phil is an extremely good counsel.”

Last week Mr Forrest said Fortescue is investigating the external lawyers that spearheaded the spying. The billionaire said at the time he was “surprised to learn of the surveillance”.

Fortescue filed its civil action in late April using coded names to disguise its targets.

The action and Federal Court appearances were kept secret until specialist teams of lawyers executed high-powered raid and document seizure orders obtained from the court on May 14.

Fortescue then had specialist teams of lawyers raid Element Zero’s HQ plus the homes of Dr Winther-Jensen and Dr Kolodziejczyk.

They’re now engaged in a legal toe-to-toe amid claims by Fortescue that Element Zero has engaged in “industrial-scale misuse” of the technology that Fortescue says is being developed to produce so-called green iron.

Fortescue claims that Dr Winther-Jensen and Dr Kolodziejczyk copied information about its processes when they left the company’s green energy subsidiary in 2021.

The mining giant alleges that after Dr Kolodziejczyk left Fortescue in 2021 it could not find a “substantial number” of documents related to its research and development for an iron ore electronic reduction process.

Fortescue’s intellectual property lawyers claimed that documents copied by Dr Kolodziejczyk and his Element Zero co-founder were “relevant” to the rival’s electronic reduction plant, which has been earmarked this year for testing in Malaga.

Fighting the document copying claims, Element Zero has pointed to working Dr Kolodziejczyk for Fortescue on patent applications in the days after his official departure.

It claims the departing scientist was set up in Old Swan Brewery offices used by Dr Forrest’s private companies and talked to the Sydney-based lawyers now running Fortescue’s Federal Court action.

It says green metals technology was developed independently of Fortescue and it was different to anything being undertaken by the Forrest interests.

A variety of legal arguments about seized material, representations made by Fortescue to obtain the raid orders and other aspects of the row are back before the Federal Court on August 19.

Fortescue hopes to set up a pilot plant near its Christmas Creek mine to test what the Forrest-controlled group claims are similar technologies for slashing the amount of carbon dioxide produced when processing iron ore.

A contentious element of Fortescue’s plan is its mooted use of volatile and flammable green hydrogen in the processing of ore into high-grade iron ready for sale at premium prices.

Element Zero senior players have claimed its process, which is not reliant on hydrogen, will be far easier to build on an industrial scale and can be used with a variety of metals.