Action coming on dirty money
carried out trials shipping panels to Auckland.
Mike Greer Homes will continue to use Concisionmanufactured panels to support its expansion in Auckland and North Island markets, while developing its own manufacturing plant closer to these markets.
‘‘High-quality, fast, off-site manufacturing will meet an everwidening gap that can’t be addressed by conventional construction. Spanbild already provides up to 5000 finished buildings each year from our five factories. We will now substantially increase our range and volume in almost every segment of the building market.’’
With Concision as part of its capability, Spanbild can provide all pre-site manufacturing of components, panels, pods, modules, and volumetric systems, as well as transportable finished buildings in a full range of building materials.
Buildings produced using Spanbild’s manufacturing technologies range from houses, farm buildings and site offices, to schools and commercial buildings, to multi-unit complexes.
As part of the transaction Spanbild and Mike Greer Homes will jointly own all intellectual property developed by Concision up until March 2018.
Mike Greer was unable to be contacted about his reasons for selling. Rules that allow Kiwi firms to disguise their true owners are again under the spotlight after an international media investigation highlighted links between an Auckland firm and alleged money laundering.
The investigation, called The Daphne Project, claimed an Auckland firm, Denton Morrell, was part of a worldwide network of companies that helped hold assets such as factories and properties connected to the families of Azerbaijan leaders, RNZ reported.
Denton Morrell says on its website that the company specialises in providing ‘‘bespoke private wealth solutions’’.
The Daphne Project, which involves 46 journalists from 16 countries, was created after Maltese journalist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb last year while investigating links between Malta and money-laundering linked to Azerbaijan.
Denton Morrell’s director is listed by the Companies Office as Matthew James Butterfield, who is also listed as a present or past director of dozens of New Zealandregistered companies.
Many of those entities list their sole shareholder as Denton Morrell, but RNZ reported that their ‘‘beneficial owners’’ – the people who effectively owned their assets – were Denton Morrell’s wealthy clients.
The actual owners of some of the other New Zealand-registered entities directed by Butterfield are disclosed on the Companies Office register and appear to be wealthy individuals based in countries including Mexico and the United States.
RNZ said there was no suggestion Denton Morrell or Butterfield were aware of any allegations relating to money-laundering that may have been carried out by the Azerbaijan-linked companies with connections to the wealth management firm.
Lobby group Transparency International said in October that the former Government had taken positive steps to combat the misuse of companies and trusts.
But New Zealand was now ‘‘falling behind’’, the organisation said.
‘‘A particular shortcoming’’ was a lack of progress establishing a publicly-searchable register of the beneficial ownership of New Zealand entities.
New Zealand had made a commitment to establish such a register at an anti-corruption summit (ACS) in London attended by former police minister Judith Collins in 2016, but had not yet followed through.
‘‘There is no action on the ACS commitment to create a company beneficial ownership register or a strategy for making both public,’’ it said.