Five people have now been charged in New Zealand's largest ever fraud case.
Twenty-one charges have been laid so far against former employees of South Canterbury Finance which collapsed last year owing $1.8 billion. Their names have not been released.
The company was placed into receivership in August last year.
The transactions have been under a 14-month investigation and the charges were yesterday laid in the Timaru District Court.
CEO of the Serious Fraud Office Adam Feeley says several large transactions were the focus of the investigation.
“The largest single transaction that we have charged on is an estimated $1.52 billion. And the total value of paying from the alleged fraudulent transaction is about $1.7 billion.”
The charges laid may only be the tip of the iceberg.
“It was very much a question of scale and materiality,” he says. “We have not completely ruled out the possibility of looking at other transactions, but right now our priority is very much with these large transactions.
While Mr Feeley will not name the five in question, he says the charges include theft by a person in a special relationship, obtaining by deception, false statements by the promoter of a company, and false accounting.
The charges carry maximum penalties of between seven and 10 years imprisonment.
Mr Feeley says the investigation was one of the most resource-intensive and time-consuming in recent history, and the value of the alleged fraud "exceeds anything in the history of white-collar crime in New Zealand".
South Canterbury Finance founder Allan Hubbard died in a car
crash earlier this year.
3 News and RadioLive