Have they driven you over the edge??
Yours in mild concern,
Alan.
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A question I’ve been pondering is “why would AH put $40m of his “own” money into Aorangi?”. Since we don’t have the details, and at the risk of be flamed off these boards I’m going to hypothesise for a moment.
Say for a moment you have access to a group of “trusted” people – or more specifically these people trust you. It might be they trust you because of your religious affiliations, your “social” standing; or your perceived profile in the wider community.
Now lets say you have “won over” influencers in these groups. These people might be people who have benefitted from you in one way or another or perhaps seen how you have benefited others. And these people now go out and speak good things about you.
Say you reckon you can help people make good money from their investment with you. In fact you’re pretty well ready to guarantee no-one will loose a thing if they put their money with you.
And as a bit of icing on top – how about if you say a bit of your profits go off to charities or trusts who do good things.
Who could meet such criteria?
Well, there’s Steven Pokere, clean living ex All Black, gifted rugby player and devout church leader. He took peoples money and promised to put it into overseas investments, principle guaranteed – but the money actually went into high risk investments. $3.9m fraud equals 2 ½ years in jail.
Or Donald Allen. Minister, preacher and motivational speaker. $8.5m in false promises and 6 ½ years in jail.
Or do we see any similarity between Tauranga and Timaru. There’s a certain population density – but more importantly there is wealth. There’s also loads of small business. That’s why the Bay was targeted by Affinity scammers.
How about an investment banker. Graeme Rutherford was even known by Don Brash and he took $7m from friends and associates.
And what about going into Statutory Management. Well - there’s Donald Rea. His operations and himself personally were put into Stat Man after an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister – and he sought a Judicial review of that decision. He ran private placement schemes and relied on word of mouth. He ran a tax consultancy business. He promised investors the money would go into educational, health and humanitarian projects. He lured wealthy farmers and people who were close to retirement and people who wanted their money invested in charities. He managed to pick up $29m over 3 – 4 years. New money helped fund the early investors. One investor gave him $800k. He maintained, till his death that his investment fund was solvent. Investor returns went on continuously – until the SFO raided the business under Stat Man. Rea took the line that people should continue to support him because he was being persecuted by IRD and the SFO – he reckoned sit tight and the money would come. . The Statutory Managers managed to get some money back – but their work was hampered by many investors who had continued faith in Rea and held public meetings saying “hold tight. And where did the money go. Some of it went to pay investors their interest (so their principle was being eroded) and investigators found that $18m went into Trusts related to the Rea family. His wife, was involved in keeping the paper work. Punters got $0.31 back.
So back to my original question – why would AH put his own money into Aorangi?. (and I accept that we don’t have an assurance that the $40m actually was his own money since we know that AH is an expert in Related Party Transactions – but perhaps we should put that thought aside for a moment). Perhaps it was to give the Trust added credibility, perhaps it was there to fund investors. Perhaps it was there to maintain trust.
OMG Minimoke, what a post !! You just lobbed a massive hand grenade into Enumerate's bunker, crikey, I hope he remembered to put his flak jacket on this morning.
Minimoke's argument fails due to the most basic of flaws of logic.
You can setup an infinite number of "staw men" - and knock them all down. In fact, this has the formal name - "the fallacy of the straw man".
This does not prove anything about Allan Hubbard and Aorangi. It is another trap for those of weak mind and nervous disposition.
Agreed.
But Enumerate will just come up with his usual bs of questioning the SM and interpretation of words and phrases. Cannot and will not answer a simple question - what does that tell us? Head in the sand comes to mind?
Meanwhile, I see that NBR carries an opinion piece from David Hillary which pretty much says that a reading between the lines of the SM Report says that AH is guilty of serious breaches of the Securities legislation? David is risking serious defamation if he is proven wrong - but on the evidence to date, he is prepared to make that call.
BTW - remember what AH said when SM was invoked? If John Key was in NZ, he would not have endorsed it? John Key came out next day and refuted that immediately.
Now we have AH stating that he did not borrow from Aorangi and the SM Report says he does. Who would you believe?
Now we have AH stating that he did not borrow from Aorangi and the SM Report says he does. Who would you believe? Balance
You know which side of the ledger I come down on. I've got a lot of time for David Hillary's analysis as he spends not inconsiderable amounts of his own running detailed analysis of the situation, and he's certainly not without a good degree of professional skill.
Was his article in Friday's print copy or the online NBR ?
Probably the kind of response we might have expected back in Donald Rea's day. And it doesn't help my thoughts on what AH is doing investing his own money in Aorangi especially when he no doubt had many other investment vehicles which could have met his personal aspirations.