Tenths Trust targeting partner’s assets

Wellington Tenths Trust is seeking to freeze the assets of Ngatata Love’s close ally, Lorraine Skiffington, as it pursues a $3.49 million claim against her.

Skiffington, 59, has been called the partner of Love, 79, the now jailed former head of the Maori land-owning trust.

However, in the High Court at Wellington yesterday, Justice Karen Clark noted there was some ‘‘ambiguity’’ in the way their relationship was described.

The Tenths Trust is now going after Skiffington, and one of her companies, saying she received payments because she held herself out as being an agent for the trust.

The assets the trust wants frozen include properties in Hamilton and Martinborough, some of which were jointly owned with a former domestic partner.

Trust lawyer Callum Reid said $3.49m was paid into two companies associated with Skiffington. The agreements for the payments were a sham to enable Love and Skiffington to personally benefit, he said.

‘‘At its simplest, this is a claim which alleges that Ms Skiffington knowingly assisted Dr Love in his breach of his fiduciary duties to the plaintiff [the trust].’’

The money was paid from the developer of a commercial building project in which the trust was to share the profits, so the payment to Love and Skiffington reduced the profit for the trust, Reid said.

The trust relied on court judgments in the criminal case against Love, who is serving a 2 ⁄ -year jail term for obtaining by deception.

Reid said Skiffington would have to find a way of ‘‘neutralising’’ the findings about Love if she was to present a defence against the civil claim.

There was no credible evidence to contradict the findings made in the verdicts against Love, he said. In fact, it was worse, because Skiffington was advancing a conspiracy between Westpac Bank and Shaan Stevens, a former business associate of Skiffington who was also convicted of fraud.

Skiffington has said in a written statement that she and Love had no idea about the financial transactions done by Stevens and a Westpac employee that led to the purchase of a Plimmerton house for $1.8m.

Reid said the explanation was inherently implausible.

Skiffington was charged with fraud along with Love, and his son Matene, but the case against her was stopped due to her ill-health. She had pleaded not guilty in that case.

Her lawyer, Jonathan Temm, said Love’s conviction, was not an evidential basis for the trust’s claim against Skiffington.

Her role had not been explained. There was a suggestion she had some influence in transactions, but the judge in the criminal case said that was not known, Temm said.

All the payments had their genesis in a consultancy agreement with her company, and she personally received nothing.

She did a lot of work under the agreement, and no complaint was made by anyone about the services provided.

The judge reserved her decision on whether the assets should be frozen.