KPMG Bay of Plenty were Accountants to this group of businesses. KPMG Bay of Plenty asked me to help their businesses in navigating through the stormy waters.
While working with these business owners (I had met with up to 32 of the 50 business), there were 32 successful settlements with IRD which resulted in the retrieval of approximately another $50m NZD for NZ Tax Payers.
It is accurate and appropriate to disclose the immense stress of the disruption I had caused within Immigration and now within the Horticultural industry and the lack of support and ill will I was creating toward myself and my efforts by “attempting to clean up” the aftermath of the corruption of Immigration NZ in the Bay of Plenty area.
The 33rd business was owned by Abdul. He had been approached by a local lawyer in Tauranga and convinced to complain about me to the NZ Law Society about refusing to refund $15,000.00 for work I had done for him.
The pace and efficiency the unfolding situation demanded from me, saw me break the administration rule of the law Society and indeed my own standard practice of banking all monies received into my instructing solicitors account. Needless to say Abdul’s complaint was upheld allowing the NZ Law Society to “Punish” me for breaking this administration rule. They made it look like I had broken the law.
Unlike other lawyers who actually had committed illegal acts of fraud and morally bankrupt behaviour being allowed to continue for years practising law and earning an income, I was immediately stripped of my practising certificate 4 years before the findings of a group of Bay of Plenty lawyers and in the words of a Hamilton Judge “I’m here to Rubber stamp” the paperwork (no hearing was in fact held with a Judge present) and I was charged $40,000.00 for the honour.
By contrast and at tax payers expense, the latest example of this has been the recently published findings of an investigation for “significant errors and failures during a murder investigation” as a result from a “Claim for costs” of New Zealand’s Crown Prosecutor in Palmerston North, KC Ben Vanderkolk whose actions were described by High Court Judge Rebecca Ellis like this:
… “at a complete loss” to understand why the Crown hadn’t complied with her orders, adding this was “not acceptable” and “deeply unsatisfactory”.
His peers were reported as saying his actions were:
- “at best, breathtakingly negligent”.
- “This breach inevitably ranks as one of the most serious ever to come before the New Zealand courts.”
- “The State should wield the broad sword of a warrior, and not the dagger of an assassin.”
Stuff reported the event in this way
- “…where evidence wasn’t disclosed during a murder trial.”
In truth, the attempt to pervert the course of justice resulted in false imprisonment of New Zealanders.
Despite all this, KC Ben Vanderkolk continued to practise law and earn a living for more than 4 years.
To this day, I am unsure why the complaint about me to the NZ Law Society was “ferociously prioritised” nor my punishment so “swift and draconian” right in the middle of the successful recovery of millions of NZ Taxpayer dollars. It is also noteworthy that Abdul “changed” his statement 7 times and this evidence was still preferred over my immaculate reputation and work record of over 20 years in NZ and UK and countless satisfied clients. In the end Abdul was found to have had a role in the theft of over a million dollars of NZ taxpayers funds. His new lawyer although promising to keep Abdul out of jail if he complained about me failed to uphold this and Abdul was sent to prison for 4 years.
I might add, during an investigation of 50 lawyers by Legal Aid in the Bay of Plenty in the nineties, I was the only lawyer to be immediately discharged when it was revealed I had under charged $400.00 less than what I was entitled to. My practise was never reliant on Legal Aid to survive – this is how I operated on any given day as my “standard practise” – no money in the world can buy that level of peace.