The interviews were conducted by the corporate regulator during its investigation into AWB's payment of $300 million of kickbacks to Iraq.

The High Court on Friday granted AWB leave to appeal against an earlier decision allowing the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to keep scores of documents secret from the wheat trader.

The documents - some of which AWB claims fall under legal professional privilege - are believed to include 41 interview transcripts and numerous other documents obtained during ASIC's investigation, including an interview with AWB's in-house lawyer, Jim Cooper.

The legal development comes after ASIC was on Wednesday humiliated in its pursuit of former AWB chief executive Andrew Lindberg, when the Victorian Supreme Court halted a second civil penalty case against him, saying it was an abuse of process.

The case that remains centres on allegations that Mr Lindberg knew at least after February 2001 that AWB had paid secret kickbacks of $US225 million ($A362 million) to Saddam Hussein's regime in breach of United Nations sanctions, and that by failing to stop the payments he had brought the company into disrepute.

Two years ago, when ASIC began its civil case against Mr Lindberg, it was ordered to release to Mr Lindberg the documents at the centre of the High Court appeal.

In July this year, AWB sought access to the documents before Mr Lindberg saw them. It argued that as the material was likely to include advice from its lawyers, AWB could claim legal professional privilege. Victorian Supreme Court judge Ross Robson ruled in AWB's favour in August, allowing both it and Mr Lindberg to examine the documents.

The decision was overturned in October, when the Court of Appeal ruled that once the material fell into the hands of a third party - in this case, ASIC - the claim for legal professional privilege was lost.

High Court justices Virginia Bell, Susan Crennan and Susan Kiefel on Friday gave AWB special leave to appeal against the Court of Appeal judgment.