Rio Tinto's Simandou mine nightmare has taken a colourful twist, with the mining giant dragged into a $10 billion court brawl between Israeli magnate Beny Steinmetz and fellow billionaire and hedge fund legend George Soros.

Companies associated with Mr Seinmetz, known as BSG Resources, lodged a lawsuit in America on Friday claiming that Mr Soros and his "minions" had caused the Guinea government to revoke valuable mining licences and then mounted a global reputation-damaging campaign.

The motivation, the claim says, was an antipathy between Mr Soros and Mr Steinmetz stretching back to a Russian deal that went wrong in the 1990s and Mr Soros' alleged hostility towards Israel.

In the court documents, BSG claims Rio Tinto was party to secret meetings with Mr Soros and the Guinea government, that its staff were part of a law firm's investigation that contributed to BSG being stripped of a valuable mining licence and that a former high-ranking Rio Tinto staffer was part of alleged global conspiracy to have Mr Steinmetz criminally investigated.