The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has laid 92 charges against three directors of Rockforte Finance Limited carrying maximum sentences of between seven and 10 years imprisonment.
Nigel Brent O’Leary and Colin Mark Simpson each face 34 charges and John Patrick Gardner faces 24, with charges including theft by a person in a special relationship, false accounting, obtaining by deception, and false statements by a promoter.
The case is the penultimate finance company investigation to be concluded by the SFO, with only the investigation of Hanover Finance still under investigation.
Rockforte Finance was established in 2003 as a provider of consumer and commercial financial services and most of its investors were from the Poverty Bay region.
It is alleged by the SFO that the directors used a large portion of investors’ money to fund their own business interests in the companies of Gisborne Haulage and Michael Ward 1969 Ltd, which operated under the ‘Jeans Jones’ label throughout New Zealand.
Rockforte Finance investors lost $3.86 million which was a smaller amount compared to other finance companies and many were covered by the Crown Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme (CRDGS).
"Rockforte Finance is yet another finance company where people have endeavoured to make prudent investments in a company they believed made arms-length commercial loans and operated under the watchful eye of an independent trustee, but the reality has been something very different," says SFO Chief Executive Adam Feeley.
Mr Feeley describes the failure of Rockforte Finance and other financial companies in Gisborne as having a significant impact on the community and that holding those responsible was a key part of rebuilding investor and business confidence.
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