Independent Weekly
HENDRIK GOUT
17/10/2009 4:00:00 AM
The owner and director of the largest shareholder in the company which the state government allows to explore the Arkaroola wilderness for uranium, Marathon Resources, is awaiting trial on charges of having bribed a government minister.
Ken Talbot of Talbot Group Investments Pty Ltd is accused of corruptly making payments to Gordon Nuttall, then a Labor minister in the Queensland Government. A company search of Marathon Resources Ltd’s top 20 shareholders yesterday shows Talbot Group Holdings Pty Ltd owns 14,869,839 shares, or more than 19 per cent of Marathon’s issued capital.
In December 2008, Gordon Nuttall and Ken Talbot were committed to stand trial on 35 corruption charges.
The charges concerned $300,000 allegedly paid by Talbot to Nuttall while Nuttall was a Minister of the Crown. Nuttall was sentenced in July this year to seven year’s jail. The court found him guilty on a total of 36 counts, and the secret commissions actually totalled $360,000.
In closing arguments he was described as a man who sold his soul for greed and vanity in receiving payments from the millionaire miner.
Read more here: Independent Weekly
Categories: COPLEY/FLINDERS News & Events
Coober Pedy Regional Times 
This company should be de-listed and the Home Office should investigate all parties that have benefited from the conspiracy, including all politicians, and business owners in the directly linked industries, mentioned in the news reports, but their full role not properly (un)covered, Ken Talbot cant take the complete rap, this should be the subject of a royal commission. Talk about the need for an anti-corruption authority in the state of South Australia,