Flamboyant developer pleads guilty
AN AUCKLAND law firm has successfully suppressed its ties to a case where an insurance broker and budding property developer both pleaded guilty to fraud.
Ralph Vuletic last week pleaded guilty in the High Court in Auckland to forging documents, using documents to obtain a pecuniary interest and perverting the course of justice. Marcus Friedlander pleaded guilty in August to similar, but more numerous charges.
Vuletic was known as a Ferraridriving property developer who associated with the likes of David Henderson, Nigel McKenna and Andrew Krukziener. Friedlander is an insurance broker based on Waiheke Island.
The offending related to the manufacture of fake loans to enable Friedlander to vote on his own creditors compromise and avoid bankruptcy.
The scheme failed and Friedlander was bankrupted in April 2003 owing $10 million.
The Serious Fraud Office, which brought the charges, welcomed the guilty pleas with the acting chief executive stating the result helped to restore confidence in the fairness of the insolvency regime.
But behind the two convictions, for a matter normally considered too minor for SFO involvement, lies a tangled tale of lawyers, suppression and suspected wrongdoing by officers of the court.
In a July hearing to consider a declined bid by Friedlander to stay the proceedings, the Auckland High Court heard the case had dragged on for almost six years after Friedlander had become entangled in a parallel investigation by the SFO into an Auckland law firm.
Friedlander’s then-lawyer Robert Hucker told the court the SFO had sufficient evidence to charge his client over the fake loans in 2006, but held off starting proceedings in the hope his co- operation could help secure convictions against two Auckland lawyers.
SFO lawyer John Dixon told the court the lawyers had enabled Friedlander’s offending and there were questions over their conduct.
Hucker quoted a letter from the SFO, dated July 28, 2006: ‘‘We have concluded there is considerable suspicion, but insufficient evidence, to charge [the two Auckland lawyers].’’
The court heard the SFO had agreed to ask the solicitor-general