SFO adds Dominion Finance to its growing list of investigations
The Serious Fraud Office is still in overdrive, adding Dominion Finance and its sister company North South Finance to a growing caseload.
Thursday, October 28th 2010, 9:51PM 
2 Comments
Director Adam Feeley said it will look at a number of related-party transactions after an extensive preliminary inquiry, and will coordinate its work with the Securities Commission and Registrar of Companies.
"We have concluded a number of cases which now enable us to address issues identified in the preliminary inquiry," Feeley said. "The investigation will focus on a small number of related party transactions which will ensure we complete the investigation in a timely manner."
Last week the SFO added new investigations into South Canterbury Finance, the WSD group of companies that were formerly chaired by ex-Progressive MP Matt Robson to its growing list of cases, and Crafar farm bidder Natural Dairy NZ.
In July, the Securities Commission accused the financiers' directors of misleading investors in some of its offer documents, and is pursuing civil and criminal charges. The board was made up of Rick Bettle, Terence Butler, Ann Butler, Paul Forsyth, Robert Barry and Vance Arkinstall, who had to step down from his role as chief executive of the funds management lobby group, Investment Savings and Insurance Association.
Dominion Finance was sent to the receivers in 2008, owing $176.9 million to some 5,900 investors, after it failed to negotiate a moratorium. North South was spared after its trustee agreed to an orderly supervised wind down, but later asked to be placed in receivership after the charges were made.
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Comments from our readers
The problem for investors was that they made the age-old mistake of "investing" into a finance company without having any direct security over any asset which the relevant finance company 'on-invested' their money into....and further to that, these investors did not even have a debenture over the relevant finance company.
However, there is a very clear and obvious set of cases which do demand the analysis (at least)of the "way" in which these finance companies were operated...particularly by their relevant heads (directors).
I know not whether you have had any involvement with the now defunct Money Managers (which in the last couple of years became MMG advisory partners).
I raise this point because they (more specifically, First Step) have not featured in the media of late EXCEPT for a recent announcement which stated that the SFO and Commerce Commission did not feel like pursuing their director.
There has been much public (& media) outcry for a call toward actually re-opening investigations into this very serious matter, yet for some reason it appears that there is a clear growing list of "similar other financial companies" being announced to go under investigation, yet for some seemingly "bizarre" reason the director of First Step and it's matrix of associated finance company funds (Doug Somers-Edgar) has simply slipped conveniently "under the radar...!"
The relevance is that there are associated losses in total of literally hundreds of millions of dollars.
Is the answer to become a successful "dissolver" of clients funds, and to avoid justice, just to become as high profile as Doug Edgar (was) or Graeme Henry in order to be able to have ultimate success in flaunting the laws that are supposed to protect us???
Why is it then that there are some who are supposedly being brought to some form of justice, yet others just seem to have acquired an ability to just melt into history...without paying any clear price...or maybe it is enough that their conscience is sufficient justice?
But the question remains for some...is there a conscience?
Michael Donovan
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