A man who was jailed after concocting an elaborate $6 million property scam to defraud overseas investors has been granted a year to get his affairs in order before he’s deported back to China.
He and his female co-offender pleaded guilty to a raft of dishonesty charges in 2021 after they were found to have defrauded a wealthy couple by convincing them to buy part of an Auckland property development.
The man was served a deportation notice from Immigration New Zealand shortly before he was released from prison on parole in May last year. Since then he has fought to remain in the country by filing an appeal with the Immigration and Protection Tribunal (IPT).
In a recently released ruling, the tribunal declined his appeal but granted him a one-year visa to get his affairs in order and to pay the remaining $640,000 he still owes his victim.
NZME has not published the man’s name to protect the privacy of his young child.
However, he told NZME in an emailed statement that his mistakes “have not only harmed society and victims but have also had irreparable effects on my family”.
“Regarding the recent decision by the IPT, my family and I are deeply disappointed. This outcome has added to the challenges we are already facing,” he said.
“I am currently dedicated to rebuilding my life, repairing relationships with my family, and diligently working to move forward. I have severed ties with past acquaintances to focus on positive changes.”
According to the tribunal decision and court documents, the man’s scam involved a proposed investment property in an Auckland suburb.
An overseas investor was told he needed to invest certain sums of money to purchase the property, while the man and his co-offender also told him others were contributing towards the investment.
But they misrepresented the amounts required and no others were offering any funds.
The fraud, court documents show, included the use of a $10m loan agreement with forged signatures and numerous emails containing false invoices to help obtain the investor’s funds.
Phony invoices for the development were also generated as coming from law firms, a geotechnical company and an engineering and design consultancy as well as a forged Land Information New Zealand (Linz) title document.
The investor said in a victim impact statement he became suspicious about the arrangement and had his accountant examine the accounts, leading to the discovery of a multimillion-dollar shortfall.
The total sum of the fraud, the court heard, was $8m but the investor was deceived into paying about $6m.
Since then, the man has repaid $1.32m to his victims.
Both offenders served just shy of three years in jail after they pleaded guilty to charges of theft by a person in a special relationship, obtaining by deception, using a forged document, false accounting, and dishonestly using a document.
Because the man committed an imprisonable offence within five years of becoming a resident of New Zealand, he voided the terms of his visa and became liable for deportation.
However, the tribunal has the power to overrule Immigration New Zealand when there are exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian nature.
His claim to the tribunal was that since his offending, his life has been ruined and he has lost his savings, reputation, marriage and his freedom.
While now separated from his wife, he still helps service her mortgage, provides for his daughter and is looking after his elderly parents, who are also in New Zealand.
“His deportation would deprive his young daughter of his fatherly care and support and the enjoyment of a normal life,” his lawyer, Roger Chambers, said in submissions to the tribunal.
“The appellant’s elderly parents are permanent residents of New Zealand. They are unable to return to China as they have no property or assets there and are in poor health. The appellant is their only son and, if deported, he would be unable to support and care for them in their old age.”
Chambers said that deportation would expose his client to loneliness and depression as a result of forcible separation from his family and would be “unduly harsh”.
“The appellant has accepted his role in what was ‘rather comprehensive’ offending and put right the wrongs that he was involved in,” Chambers said.
Rhys Boyd, counsel acting on behalf of the Minister for Immigration, said the man had failed to meet the threshold for exceptional humanitarian circumstances.
“The appellant’s offending was in flagrant disregard to the rights of the victims,” Boyd said.
“It would be against the public interest to not deport the appellant because of the seriousness and number of his convictions, the extremely high monetary value and sustained nature of his offending, and the risk of recidivism.”
The tribunal took into account the man’s relationship with his daughter and that deporting him would be a significant upheaval for her.
“His parents will be faced with a difficult choice between remaining in New Zealand without their son and with the absence of the social support that he provides or a return to China with him where they no longer own a home and will face shame and humiliation of family members,” the tribunal noted.
“In addition to these factors, the tribunal has the best interests of the appellant’s daughter at the forefront of its mind as a primary consideration that must be weighed in determining whether it would be unjust or unduly harsh for the appellant to be deported.”
Ultimately, the tribunal found it would not be unduly harsh for the man to be deported.
However, it exercised its discretion to grant him a year to get his affairs in order in terms of arranging care for his daughter and parents, and to pay the remaining $640,000 he still owed his victim.
Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.
China Evergrande — the world’s most indebted property developer — received a liquidation order from a Hong Kong court on Monday, but there may be little left to recover, said experts.
The order came more than two years after Evergrande sent the country’s property sector into a tailspin.
Liquidators will now take control of the company’s assets and prepare to sell them in order to repay the company’s debts, which total $300 billion.
An offshore investor named Top Shine Global brought the winding-up lawsuit against Evergrande in 2022. Its proceedings were adjourned multiple times as Evergrande sought more time to restructure its debts.
On Monday, Evergrande applied for another adjournment. But Judge Linda Chan said Evergrande had been unable to offer a concrete restructuring plan and ordered its liquidation.
“It is time for the court to say enough is enough,” said Chan, according to Reuters.
Trading in the shares of Evergrande and its subsidiaries was halted on Monday following news of the order. Hong Kong-listed China Evergrande Group’s stock price plunged 21% before the court hearing.
Evergrande did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.
Monday’s court order is a far cry from Evergrande’s heyday as China’s top developer by sales in 2016.
Evergrande has been mired in a liquidity crisis since 2021. It first defaulted on an offshore dollar bond in December of that year. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in the US in August and scraped a restructuring plan in October due to worse-than-expected property sales.
‘There are only losers in the collapse of Evergrande’
Siu Shawn, Evergrande’s CEO, told local media in China that the real-estate company will still ensure the delivery of homes in China, state-owned Securities Times reported on Monday.
But several experts BI spoke to prior to Monday’s court order said Evergrande’s liquidation will be challenging.
It’s bad news for creditors, Mat Ng, the managing director at Grant Thornton, a professional services firm that specializes in restructuring, told BI.
“Given its scale, a liquidation of Evergrande would be a challenging process and the likely return to creditors would be expected to be low,” said Ng.
That’s particularly since the Chinese property sector is in the dumps amid sluggish demand and falling home prices — which means any sale of Evergrande’s assets is likely to be at fire-sale prices, John Bringardner, the head of Debtwire, a fixed-income data and news provider, told BI in November.
“At this point in the process, there are only losers in the collapse of Evergrande,” Bringardner added.
In July, Evergrande cited an analysis by Deloitte that estimated a recovery rate of 3.4% on its debt if the company is liquidated, per Reuters. Creditors now expect the recovery rate at less than 3%, according go the news agency.
Investors also appear to be out of luck, particularly if they’re outside of China, and the process of getting their investments may take years.
“Onshore stakeholders are busy working to ensure home purchasers will eventually receive the homes they have paid for one way or another, but retail ‘mom and pop’ investors in the company’s offshore securities will be facing even further uncertainty and delay which would likely continue for years,” Daniel Margulies, a partner at Dechert, a law firm that specializes in restructuring in Asia, told BI.
The court order to liquidate Evergrande also signals that problems of this size in China “seemingly cannot be restructured and will likely end up in some form of liquidation, whether onshore or offshore,” said Margulies.
Evergrande’s liquidation comes as China’s economy continues to struggle
Evergrande’s liquidation comes as China’s economy faces significant headwinds from a property crisis, deflationary pressure, and a demographic crisis.
Market sentiment over China’s economy is so bad that the country’s stock markets sold down massively last week as investors made a dash for the exit door.
Despite the complications that could come with Evergrande’s liquidation, there may be some upside in the longer run.
“Evergrande’s liquidation is a sign that China is willing to go to extreme ends to quell the property bubble,” Andrew Collier, a managing director at Orient Capital Research, told Reuters.
“This is good for the economy in the long term but very difficult in the short term,” he added.
- Kenny G lost his bid to slash his $40k spousal support payments last year after it was revealed he earns $600k monthly by renting out his Malibu estate to Jeff Bezos
- Ex-wife Lyndie Benson, 58, later accused the musician – whom she divorced in 2013 – of ‘violating the terms of their agreement by not selling the house, which could’ve potentially earned her a hefty profit
- But a judgement this month seen by DailyMail.com granted the saxophonist – who is now dating Anaisia Thuy Nguyen – a protective order banning his ex from engaging in legal maneuvers over the home
Legendary saxophonist Kenny G has scored a victory in his bitter battle with his ex-wife over the Malibu estate he rents – to Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and fiancé Lauren Sanchez – for $600,000 a month.
Lyndie Benson, 58, whose divorce from musician was finalized in 2013, wants to force Kenny to sell the seaside property so she can share in the profit, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The musician – real name Kenneth Gorelick – bought the home in 1998 for $12million and purchased the house next door for $3million in 2000. Today it’s worth at least twice that amount.
Last year Kenny failed in a bid to slash $40,000-a-month spousal support payments to his ex after an LA judge was told he was renting out the palatial property to Amazon boss Jeff Bezos for an eyewatering $600,000-a-month.
Kenny, 67, and Benson have been fighting over his mega mansion ever since – he says he has no obligation to sell and can rent out as he pleases, adding in court papers that Benson had never mentioned the home until he tried to cut her money.
Now, in a judgement dated January 4, he has won a protective order banning his ex-wife from engaging in vexatious legal maneuvers over the home and been told he doesn’t need to hand over a copy of the rental agreement with Bezos.
The ruling says the musician can also ignore all but two of Benson’s 38 requests for information about the home and the lease agreement – limiting it to one about any improvements made to the mega-mansion and another about whether any genuine offers to purchase the house have been made to him via a realtor.
As a result, the musical maestro – who has since moved on with new girlfriend Anaisia Thuy Nguyen – was relaxed and joked about his legal tussles when DailyMail.com caught up with him last week and asked about the divorce, saying: ‘Oh that was a long time ago. I never think about it.’
The dad-of-two then burst out laughing when a rapprochement with Benson was suggested, telling DailyMail.com: ‘That makes me laugh!’
The composer made a public appearance with Nguyen just a few weeks after the judgment was handed down, at The Aviation Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the two lovebirds were all smiles.
Multiple Grammy winner Kenny, divorced Benson in 2013 and agreed to a settlement that sees him shell out $40,000 per month in spousal support.
In 2021, he filed to have the amount reduced – claiming his income had dropped dramatically since 2018 and that he could no longer afford it.
But in March last year, his request to slash his spousal support bill was denied – after it was revealed he was renting out his Malibu estate for $600,000-a-month to tech tycoon Bezos, who is currently renovating his own $165million Malibu mansion.
Benson then claimed she is being short-changed and is now trying to force him to sell the property which was awarded solely to him in their divorce.
Using a 1924 judgement as a precedent, she says she is owed 25 per cent of the home’s sale price above $40million and says he should be forced to sell up in her lifetime.
His team, led by hotshot divorce attorney Laura Wasser whose previous clients include Kevin Costner, say he is under no obligation to sell – or give his ex-wife any part of the rental proceeds.
They also say Benson is engaging in vexatious litigation by filing multiple discovery requests and say a confidentiality clause in the rental agreement prevents him from handing it over.
In court, Benson said the identity of the renter – Bezos and fiancée Lauren Sanchez – is widely known.
But her arguments failed to impress the Honorable Scott J. Nord whose January 4 judgement denied nearly all of her discovery requests and her wish for financial sanctions against the musician.
The saxophonist is the best-selling instrumental artist ever and released his 20th studio album last month: Innocence.
Speaking about the new release, he told DailyMail.com: ‘It’s an album of lullabies actually, which is kind of cliched for my music.’
Nonetheless, he spent most of last month on the road to promote the new release, with performances in Munhall, Pennsylvania, Englewood, New Jersey and Wheeling, West Virginia, among others.
The 67-year-old’s previous efforts include 11 platinum albums and eight multi-platinum releases, with more than 75 million records sold.
Along with collaborating with Katy Perry and Kanye West, his music appeared on the soundtrack for The SpongeBob Movie, and in 2021, HBO made a documentary of his life and music, Listening to Kenny G.
The following year, he appeared in a Super Bowl advert for the beer Busch Light – his second Super Bowl ad, after appearing for Audi in 2011.
In 2022, he told Forbes he didn’t mind being mocked for being everywhere.
‘If I’m the butt of the joke, if it’s funny, I love it,’ he says, recalling how 1992 comedy film Wayne’s World included a joke about a dentist swapping out Novocain for his music.
He also referenced a South Park episode which mentioned how his music ‘makes everyone crap their pants,’ and how Saturday Night Live made fun of him for a duet he did with Frank Sinatra.
‘It doesn’t bother me because it’s truly funny.’