Kerry Stokes, Seven Group Holdings Chairman, Media Mogul, Billionaire and all round fat cat has been charged with contempt of court. The hearing is set for June 28th 2011.

How Mr Stokes has avoided being charged with contempt of court until now is beyond me given that he can rightfully be described as Australia’s number one perjurer.

In relation to the current contempt charges it is best covered in an article on the SMH website where it says:

“The contempt charges emerged during Seven’s legal bid to delay its former chief sales and digital officer James Warburton from taking up the chief executive’s post at Ten Network Holdings.”

“It was reported Mr Stokes accused Mr Warburton of ‘‘embellishing’’ the truth in his evidence given during the trial.”

‘‘If you are saying that James Warburton, in the process of trying to improve his case, may have embellished upon the truth, that would be close to being accurate, I would think,’’ Mr Stokes was quoted as saying. (Click here to read the full article)

The contempt charges are to be heard next month by Justice Michael Pembroke in the NSW Supreme Court. But Kerry Stokes has a history of having total and utter contempt for the Australian legal system.

Mr Stokes gave evidence during the infamous C7 legal battle where Mr Stokes via his media interests (Channel 7 and C7) sued numerous parties which is set out on Wikipedia where it says:

“Seven launched what is considered to be the largest ever media lawsuit in Australia, naming 22 defendants including Nine, Ten, Optus, Austar, the AFL, the NRL, Fox Sports, PBL and Telstra. Primarily basing the claim on anti-competitive provisions in Part IV of the Trade Practices Act.” (Click here to read the full article)

Kerry Stokes and C7 lost its case which was heard by Justice Ronald Sackville who handed down his decision in July 2007.

As reported in the Herald Sun, in his judgement Justice Sackville said of Mr Stokes:

“A FEDERAL Court judge has accused Seven Network boss Kerry Stokes of giving “deliberately false” evidence in his failed C7 pay TV case and condemned the action’s $200 million legal bill as a “scandalous” waste.”

But he said: “There were occasions on which, in my opinion, he gave evidence that he knew was not true.”

“Mr Stokes evidence on this issue was not only implausible but, I must conclude, deliberately false,” Justice Sackville said.

“Sometimes, he changed his evidence when confronted with material that made it virtually impossible to maintain the position he had previously adopted.” (Click here to read the full article)

We’ll wait and see what Justice Michael Pembroke does in court next month with Kerry Stokes’s contempt charges.

Update: Kerry Stokes threatens legal action in relation to the above post

Addisons Lawyers sent me a threatening letter on the 26th of May 2011 on behalf of Kerry Stokes telling me to amend the above post or else they will commence legal action. I did another post titled “Kerry Stokes threatens legal action against blogger” and scanned the letter in. (Click here to read the post and Kerry Stokes’s lawyers letter)