A specialist team from Australia's Corporate Watchdog will consider allegations that Hunter-based Sweetman Renewables engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct as part of a fundraising campaign.
The Nature Conservation Council initially wrote to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission in December last year with concerns Sweetman Renewables may have made false statements to the market when it was attempting to attract investors.
It highlighted numerous media reports that stated Sweetman had signed a $90 million contract to supply woodchips to the Japanese energy company Sinanen.
Sinanen chief executive Masaki Yamazaki later described the suggestion that his company had signed a contract with Sweetman as "deplorable".
ASIC contacted the NCC on June 2 to advise that following preliminary enquiries it had decided to refer the matter to a specialist team.
"ASIC has considered all of the information you provided and we have now referred this issue to a specialist team within ASIC for further consideration," Genny Fagan from ASIC's Misconduct & Breach Reporting Operations Group wrote.
"In its consideration of the matter, ASIC must first determine whether there is a breach of the provisions of the legislation that it administers. If a breach has occurred, ASIC will consider what regulatory action is available, and what, if any, action is appropriate."
Sweetmans Renewables chairman John Halkett did not respond to the Newcastle Herald's queries about the matter.
The company last year announced that it was seeking to recommence the export of wood chips from Newcastle harbour despite significant community and corporate opposition.
The company experienced another setback last week when the Land and Environment Court rejected Verdant Earth Technologies' appeal to establish a biomass power station near Warkworth.
Verdant was seeking to burn biomass at Redbank Power Station instead of coal to produce electricity and hydrogen production.
Sweetman Renewables had been in talks with Verdant regarding supplying biomass for the power station.
Nature Conservation Council Chief Executive Chris Gambian welcomed ASIC's interest in the council's complaint.
"Opening a new wood chip export trade, as Sweetman Renewables plans to do, would be devastating for our native forests, koalas and other wildlife.
"We must end native forest logging in NSW and put a strong, sustainable plantation-based industry in its place."
