The bitter legal battle between Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart, and her children has escalated with the mining magnate threatening to cancel the family's "ransom insurance policy" unless details of their galling legal stoush are kept quiet.
After emails between Mrs Rinehart and two of her daughters were published in newspapers, the iron ore mogul said she would terminate the relevant insurance policies against her children unless they supported her bid for a suppression order in court today, Canberra Times reports.
The emails revealed Mrs Rinehart's children demanded "bodyguards and very safe homes" because their mother's wealth could attract opportunistic criminals and kidnappers.
A letter sent by Mrs Rinehart's legal team to lawyers acting for John Langley Hancock, Bianca Hope Rinehart and Hope Rinehart Welker, said her children's decision not to support her application for a non-publication order on the emails and a security report code-named Project Tara, drove her actions.
The lawyers implied that by allowing private emails to enter the public arena Mrs Rinehart’s children showed they had no real safety concerns.
''We can only presume that your clients' previously stated concerns for the personal safety of their families and themselves have now completely and entirely disappeared,'' Paul McCann, a partner at Corrs Chambers Westgarth, wrote.
''Under these circumstances, it seems that your clients would place no value in the continuation of 'ransom insurance' that is currently provided to them and/or their young children.''
The letter added "you may consider such insurance to be wasteful expenditure."
Mr McCann wrote that the insurance would continue if lawyers acting for Mrs Rinehart's children decided to support a suppression order before the NSW Supreme Court today.
In a statement issued on Friday, Mr Hancock said he was highly concerned for the safety of him family and himself.
''I can support my wife and children in a modest manner from the work I do, but I can't provide the level of funds required to deal with security issues - real or imagined - associated with being the son of a woman worth more than $20billion,'' he said.
''But she won't share a penny to help protect her grandchildren from the risks she - the trustee of our family trust - is creating by her own actions."
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