Wednesday 15th December 2010 5 Comments |
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The New Zealand assets of former Hanover Finance director Mark Hotchin have been frozen by a court order, the Securities Commission says.
The commission applied for the order and the High Court granted the application without notice to Mr Hotchin on December 10.
Mr Hotchin intends to apply to revoke these orders and a hearing relating to this is expected in February.
The commission said it wanted to freeze sufficient property and assets to meet any civil claims that may be brought by investors.
A commission investigation into Hanover has not concluded. The move to freeze assets was in no way indicative of civil or criminal liability, it said.
"The commission decided to take this action against Mr Hotchin after deciding it was in the public interest to do so, enabling us to preserve assets from being sold or transferred," said commission chairwoman Jane Diplock.
Last month the Serious Fraud Office said its investigation of Hanover had found that reasonable grounds exist to believe that fraud may have been committed.
Hanover Finance and its associate, United Finance, froze some $554 million of investors' funds in 2008. Investors agreed to a moratorium proposal but were later asked to swap their fixed income securities to new shares in Allied Farmers.
The assets of the finance company, founded by Mr Hotchin and Eric Watson, were sold to Allied Farmers last year but the value of the assets has been drastically written down.
Hanover and Allied have been criticising each other over asset "mismanagement" and the Securities Commission has said it would meet before Christmas to decide whether criminal charges would be laid against Hanover Finance.
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