Former Tenths trustee tells Love trial he was ok with 'consultants' getting $3M fee

Thursday 25th August 2016

A former trustee for the Wellington Tenths Trust has told Ngatata Love's fraud trial that he was ok with the idea that "consultants" could be paid a $3 million fee for negotiating a deal with property developers.

Former Tenths Trust chair Love is charged with obtaining a secret commission and obtaining significant sums by deception. The Crown says he signed an agreement in late 2006 with Auckland property developers Redwood Group and Equinox Group to ensure they could lease land owned by the Tenths Trust, and that he received service fees through Pipitea Street Development Limited (PSDL), a company owned by his companion Lorraine Skiffington, without the trust’s knowledge. That money is said to have been used to repay a property loan.

The final defence witness, Grant Knuckey, a former trustee of the Tenths Trust when Love was chairman, said he would have expected there to be a payment to the consulting group for negotiating with the developers on the Trust's behalf.

"Oh absolutely, we couldn't do it ourselves," Knuckey said in the High Court at Wellington yesterday. "The risk was too great, we didn't have the team, we would have had to go out and hire a lot of people."

Asked by Love's lawyer, Colin Carruthers QC, what his response would be if he was told the payment for those services totalled $3 million, Knuckey said that he thought that was part of the $75 million cost of building - "it was a development cost" - and it wasn't a cost to the trust.

Earlier in the hearing and in his third day in the witness box, Love was asked by crown prosecutor Grant Burston about a joint venture partnership document which discussed the relationship between PSDL and Pipitea St Limited and showed PDSL loaned $1.5 million for the purchase of the Love and Skiffington's Moana Rd, Plimmerton property.

The document, created in November 2010, was found on Love's laptop by the Serious Fraud Office, Burston said, though Love said he hadn't much used the laptop and denied he had written it.

"I wish I could prepare a document like that, but I couldn't, and it's certainly not my creation," Love said. "I didn't create this document, I physically wouldn't know how to do that in terms of a computer."

Throughout the document, the author used the terms "we" and "us" about the developer payment negotiations, and refers to correspondence Skiffington had by saying "you". The Crown says the document must have been written by Love, with "we" referring to him and Skiffington, something which Love denied.

"Lorraine Skiffington was not the author, the only other person who would have written this document found on your laptop," Burston said. "You were confirming you and Lorraine used the funds to purchase Moana Road."

Love said he hadn't made the document, and said the questions in the document sounded more like they had come from Shaan Stevens.

The trial continues today with both sides set to sum up their cases.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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