Mark Hotchin

The ongoing defamation trial against Bruce Sheppard by Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson has taken another step with the court deciding that it will be heard as a judge alone trial. NBR reports [paid content]:

The SFO has finally announced that it will not be prosecuting anyone from Hanover over the collapse. After years of investigations they simply have not found anything to warrant a prosecution.

The Serious Fraud Office is not laying criminal charges against anyone associated with Hanover Finance following a 32-month investigation.

The office has spent longer mulling over whether to lay charges in the wake of the Hanover collapse than in the case of any other finance company it has probed.

The Hanover probe was ” by far the most extensive and challenging of the finance company investigations undertaken by SFO” said acting chief executive Simon McArley today.

“While many may view the conduct that occurred at Hanover Finance as egregious, that alone is not sufficient for me to commence a prosecution,” McArley said.  Read more »

I see all the usual suspects are lining up to have a larrup at Jonathan Marshall again. Word has it that Russell Brown is itching to run one up him, hard.

@drbrianedwards I’m looking at this one too. It’s bizarre and alarming.

— Russell Brown (@publicaddress) March 21, 2013

Brian Edwards has jumped all over this again, like he did on the Mark and Amanda Hotchin stitch up. Back then he may well have been right.

You may recall that the Sunday Star Times responded to my challenge to them to produce either a recording of Marshall’s ‘interview’ with Mrs Hotchin or his written notes of their ‘conversation’ by sending me a menacing lawyer’s letter requiring me to cease and desist or face the consequences. I published the letter on this site.

So just what has Marshall to do with the Barker family? Well Marshall is currently ‘Investigations Editor’ for the News Limited Network in Australia. I’ll let Jonathan Holmes,  host of the ABC’s excellent Media Watch, tell the story.

Seems Mr Marshall’s journalistic ethics and approach haven’t changed much since he left our fair shores: no point in letting the facts spoil a good story when it’s so easy to change the facts, just a little.  Read more »

Apparently Van Ginsbergen is now enjoying politics rather than motor racing…but who cares, it’s just a word, sounds the same…I really should stop pointing out all the error’s that Bryce Johns’ “decent journalists, trained and skilled” are making…but then he did email me to try harder.

Read more »

ᔥ NBR

Good to see Mark Hotchin finally fighting back against the leaking, whinging FMA. Usually they are the ones first to the news with sneaky little leaks about the Hanover case but this time Mark Hotchin has got his licks in first.

Former Hanover Finance boss Mark Hotchin is challenging the Financial Markets Authority to prove the failed finance company’s investors lost out for any other reason than the collapse in the New Zealand property market and the global financial crisis.

Mr Hotchin took the unusual step of releasing a press statement which he said summarised a Statement of Defence filed with the Auckland High Court on July 31, in response to charges laid by the FMA from an investigation that began more than four years ago.

Hanover froze repayments in July 2008 on $296.5 million of investors’ funds, at a time when it claimed $550 million of assets.

The FMA action only pursues redress for depositors who invested $35 million with Hanover between December 2007 and July 2008.

Remember too that Mark Hotchin, alone, still has all his assets frozen, despite there not being a single criminal charge laid against him. The FMA after years of investigation could only struggle to file a civil case. Despite what the NBR saysWhile the media hated on Mark Hotchin they are literally sucking off Kim Dotcom and lapping up everything he says….and Dotcom actually is charged with crimes, and has been prosecuted for crimes in the past.

You really do have to wonder why the FMA does not seek to lock up the assets of the other involved in the case. I should think that Mark Hotchin has a good case for victimisation.

ᔥ NZ Herald

A judge has told a jury to ignore the mad clamourings of the media intent on lynching directors of finance companies:

A High Court judge has told the jury trying Carol Braithwaite to ignore any prejudices they have about finance companies or finance company directors.

Braithwaite – the former wife of jailed National Finance boss Trevor Ludlow – is the first director from a failed New Zealand finance company to have a case before a jury.

As a National Finance director, she faces one charge of making untrue statements in a company prospectus. She has pleaded not guilty and will defend the charge on the basis that she believed at the time the prospectus was correct.

The charge, laid by the Financial Markets Authority, carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison or fines of up to $300,000.

Justice Pamela Andrews told the jury of 12 that there is no room for prejudice in the case, which started today.

“This trial is essentially about a finance company. You may have heard or read about trials of those who are directors of finance company, you may know someone who has invested in a finance company and you may have your own views about finance companies.

The media in New Zealand have run campaigns against finance directors, especially one director who to this date remains un-charged by any authority save a civil action by the FMA. Mark Hotchin and other Hanover directors have been hounded from the country despite not a single criminal charge ever being laid.

Not only that his assets remain frozen in a case of judicial travesty. Some outlets even gratuitously use the man’s name in order to make their bonuses for traffic from their website so search engine friendly is his name.

How on earth then are jurors in another case actually before a court supposed to put aside any prejudices regarding finance company directors when our media has held print, radio and television virtual lynchings of the same?

ᔥ NZ Herald

Things aren’t going well for the authorities. Dotcom’s lawyers seem to get a much better run from Winkelmann J. than Mark Hotchin’s lawyers….he still has all his assets locked up tight despite still being uncharged criminally by any authority:

The High Court has ruled the police raid on internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom’s Auckland mansion was illegal and the removal from New Zealand of cloned copies of hard drives seized was unlawful.

Justice Helen Winkelmann found the warrants used did not adequately describe the offences to which they were related.

“Indeed they fell well short of that. They were general warrants, and as such, are invalid.”

ᔥ Stuff.co.nz

Following on from criminally charged frat boy with a silly accent living life on the large we have the story about that nice old Mrs Hubbard who has turned out to be not so nice after all.

Jean Hubbard is fighting for the control of $60 million worth of assets originally promised by her late husband Allan to investors in Aorangi Securities.

In the Timaru High Court today Mrs Hubbard’s lawyer, Andrew Butler, said she would contest that the assets were owned by the investors.

In a statement statutory managers of Aorangi were critical of what they described as a U-turn by the Hubbards. If investors are found by the court to be the owners they could get back close to 100 per cent of their investment in Aorangi.

The court action comes just over two years after the saga began, on June 20, 2010, when Allan and Jean Hubbard, and their investment entities Aorangi Securities and Hubbard Management Funds, plus seven charitable trusts, were put in statutory management by the Government.

It followed Mr Hubbard placing $60m worth of assets into charitable trusts for the benefit of Aorangi investors to raise the capital to meet the request of the Securities Commission to issue a prospectus.

This and other transactions led to the couple being placed in statutory management.

Perhaps the SFO shouldn’t have been so quick in abandoning the cases against the Hubbards and South Canterbury Finance and perhaps the FMA might like to move with the same sort of speed it did against Mark Hotchin. There is certainly more coin there than they are ever going to get our of Hotchin.

There certainly seems to be an urgent need to protect the mum and dad investors waiting for their payout from Aorangi.

Will they freeze the assets of a greedy little old lady?

Or does the FMA only act in cases of media manufactured activism?

Either Hubbard is a fraud or not and if s/he is a fraud then the SFO should move to freeze these assets with the same stealth the FMA did with Mark Hotchin way way back in December 2010.

Great moments in New Zealand churnalism as both the Herald and NBR succumb to the PR offensive of a fat jolly German man.

The Herald and NBR think it is a great wag of a joke for Ben Gracewood to party it up with Kim Dotcom in his pool with a bunch of blokes. Remember this was the guy who refused to show on Breakfast if Paul Henry was there because he was upset with his comments…but whistle up an invite for piss, pool and blokes and there he is in all his glory.

So much for the asset freeze.

In the meantime Mark Hotchin’s assets are still frozen and his income tightly restricted and yet he remains uncharged criminally by even a single authority.

I wonder if he finished Paritai Drive and invited reporters over if they would behave like this?

Or does he have to bulk up and have a silly accent as well.

More likely they would breathlessly report the extreme extravagance of P Drive and use the brand of champagne to continue their persecution of a man who is yet to even be charged with a single crime.

ᔥ NZ Herald

Does anyone else find it strange that hte Herald and cub reporter David Fisher fawns all over a convicted embezzler and insider-trading, currently facing more charges fat, jolly, German fellow and his every utterance but maintains open hostility to another Kiwi citizen who so far remains un-charged for any crime and yet has all his assets frozen.

Every time the German fratboy goes to court to get his assets unfrozen the media laps it, yet when Mark Hotchin goes to court they snarl and snap.

Comparing the the two cases becomes very Fawlty Towers-esque…especially with the wife. Whatever you do don’t mention the wh….