![\"Keith](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9a9a5900f54db8b7f368d11d9435233e.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nThe prosecution in the case of whisky distillery founder Keith Batt, 64, has told Hobart’s Supreme Court the trial will go “for months”.<\/p>\n
Mr Batt is charged with more than 700 criminal offences, including 622 counts of fraud, 66 counts of stealing and 48 counts of dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage.<\/p>\n
Last year, he pleaded not guilty to all charges.<\/p>\n
Mr Batt was the founder of Nant Distillery at Bothwell, in Tasmania’s central highlands.<\/p>\n
The alleged scheme involved investors purchasing barrels of whisky after production began, with Nant promising to buy the barrels back from investors when they matured.<\/p>\n
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Keith Batt has pleaded not guilty. (X: Keith Batt)<\/p>\n
It is alleged that many barrels were not filled with whisky, and that whisky was taken from barrels.<\/p>\n
The charges range from 2007 to 2016, and span a 250-page document, seen by the ABC, covering $586,680 in alleged offending.<\/p>\n
In March this year, the prosecution asked for six weeks to review “extensive” material.<\/p>\n
The matter returned to court today, with Mr Batt attending via telephone.<\/p>\n
The prosecution told Associate Justice Michael Daly that the case has a brief of 55 lever-arch folders and would require more time to file the material.<\/p>\n
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Associate Justice Daly requested an estimate of the projected trial duration to get “a sense of the size of the undertaking”.<\/p>\n
The prosecution said the trial will be months-long and had been estimated to take between three to six months.<\/p>\n
Associate Justice Daly said he would make a direction that the papers are not to be filed in “hard copy, if avoidable”, given the volume of material.<\/p>\n
He bailed Mr Batt to reappear in the Supreme Court on February 16.<\/p>\n
Three to six months an ‘unusually long’ hearing time<\/p>\n
A Supreme Court of Tasmania spokesperson said the estimated hearing time is “unusually long” for a criminal trial.<\/p>\n
“The only matter of a similar length was the double murder trial of Stephen Roy Standage in 2014, which ran for approximately five months.<\/p>\n
“In that trial, the court did not sit every day, and it often started and finished early to give counsel time to prepare for the next day,” they said.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said parties may be able to agree on some evidence, “which in turn may reduce the estimated hearing time”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The prosecution in the case of whisky distillery founder Keith Batt, 64, has told Hobart’s Supreme Court the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,354,352618,352616,352617,44,1049,172727],"class_list":["post-728076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fraud","tag-keith-batt","tag-nant","tag-nant-distillery","tag-news","tag-supreme-court","tag-whisky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}