Tana: Ex business partner’s son complains about Green MP
A Stuff investigation revealed earlier this month that migrant workers had lodged claims against a business associated with Green MP Darleen Tana, leading the party to stand her down. More allegations followed. Now the son of an ex business partner has co
Robert Vaassen set up Waiheke Island’s first e-bike rental business in the garden of his Blackpool home. He was in his late seventies when he met Christian Hoff-Nielsen and Darleen Tana, recently returned to the island from Europe. They quickly bought the business from him, and Tana would later say: “It was a watershed moment. We saw the business model straight away, we could see the potential. We talked to him on a Friday and bought it on Monday.”
But Vaassen’s son, David, is the latest to complain about the conduct of Tana, now a Green Party MP and until recently the party’s small business spokesperson, who has been stood down since Stuff revealed allegations that the bike business, now solely run by Hoff-Nielsen, had exploited migrant workers.
David Vaassen emailed the Green Party on Wednesday to tell them that Tana and Hoff-Nielsen had still not settled a debt to his late father after Robert Vaassen provided finance to the couple to get their business off the ground.
He’s not the only former business partner of the couple to say that their partnership ended unhappily.
Danijel Duvnjak, who co-owned Blenheim e-bike business Green Wheels Blenheim, says he responded to a 2020 Green Party email asking for support before that year’s election with a note saying he could not support the party while Tana was a candidate (she ran in the Northland constituency in 2020 before being elected on the Green list in 2023). “I said that I was not in a position to further support a party that chose to promote a candidate that I knew lacked integrity.” He received no response.
The Greens say they cannot locate Duvnjak’s email, and have referred Vaassen to the independent lawyer, Rachel Burt, who is investigating the allegations against Tana.
Duvnjak says he was never paid out for relinquishing his shareholding in the company in 2018, despite believing it was worth $80,000, and says his business partnership with Tana and Hoff-Nielsen was an unhappy one.
David Vaassen, meanwhile, says his family intend to pursue a Disputes Tribunal claim for the tribunal’s maximum sum, $30,000, against Tana and Hoff-Nielsen personally.
He says his father, who died in 2023, helped the couple get established after the sale, including a series of loans totalling $157,000 so they could buy stock.
The loans were not repaid and nor was interest until the middle of 2019 when
Danijel Duvnjak
Robert and David Vaassen met Hoff-Nielsen and Tana and the couple signed a personal loan agreement in both their names, which also allowed for interest to be paid.
Eventually, says David Vaassen, the majority of the loan was repaid in May 2021, but some of the principal and all the interest remained due. There were further small payments in August 2021 and March 2022 but nothing since.
In an email to the Green Party, Vaassen said that to claim Tana was “not aware of this is to put it mildly a joke ... in fact I would go as far to say that Darlene was intimately involved in the loan, the business and plans to expand the business during the years that our family have known them both”.
Vaassen’s email said the family were “incredibly hurt” and that his father had passed away knowing the couple had “delayed and obfuscated” about the loan.
Robert Vaassen’s wife also died in 2023 and David’s email to the Greens said seeking the repayment was mainly a matter of principle, to restore his father’s mana and see the couple face their responsibilities.
In his email, Vaassen said the family believed that Tana was “not a suitable minister of parliament, nor a representative of small business people, nor of honest hardworking Kiwis. And [Hoff-Nielsen] is certainly not someone you would want to do business with”.
Hoff-Nielsen wouldn’t comment on Vaassen’s allegations.
Duvjnak entered a business relationship with Hoff-Nielsen and Tana, becoming a 50% per cent shareholder in Green Wheels Blenheim in November 2015 when Hoff-Nielsen and Tana took over an existing cycling business in Blenheim owned by Bill Mitchell.
The couple each retained a 25% shareholding. Duvjnak moved there from Auckland to be the hands-on manager and said he had difficulties throughout his time there.
He lasted three years before deciding he had to quit for his own mental health. While he said he resigned as a director in November 2018, Companies Office records were not updated for almost a year after. Green Wheels Blenheim’s page on the Companies Register still suggests he is a 50% shareholder.
Duvnjak, who now lives in the Netherlands, says he had managed to move on mentally. “I’m actually grateful now for the experience, it has taught me a lot about people and how they behave,” he says.
“The hardest thing was that there is very little, if any support, in the situations I found myself in. Employees have avenues, business partners, I am not sure. But I now have a sensitivity for people who are going through something similar and I can offer empathy, which I find rewarding. That’s why I am grateful, I have gained so much since, transforming the pain into art, design, writing, and presence with people.”
Hoff-Nielsen, in a message, said “the whole township of Blenheim knows the story…”, listing landlords, business partners and suppliers whom he implied would say Duvnjak was at fault, not him.
Former owner Bill Mitchell says he’d only had good dealings with Hoff-Nielsen. He says that several of the staff had left unhappy with Duvnjak’s management style, that stock levels were low when Duvnjak departed and that in his opinion, Duvnjak should not expect any return from the store because it was in such a dire state when Hoff-Nielsen took it back over.
Another former shareholder in the company, Phil Sarsfield, who owned five per cent when the company was founded, also told Stuff he was owed money
The details of two previous ERA hearings lost by E-Cycles NZ Ltd, which ended with orders to pay former staff members Charles Simpson (about $6200) and Nick Scott (about $30,000).
A Statutory Demand has been served on Hoff-Nielsen for his failure to pay Scott any of that award, with Scott’s representative Alex Kersjes saying Hoff-Nielsen had “avoided all responsibility”.
Two other former staff members described the chaotic running of the company where wages were often late. One said that the investigation was “karma coming back to bite them.” One said “They knew what the hell they were doing with Santi’s visa,” while another said “I saw this coming”. Documents which suggested Tana would have known about issues at the business, including late payments, much earlier than February this year, when she first alerted the Green Party. Tana and Hoff-Nielsen had their family membership of the Waiheke Boat Club cancelled over a disputed debt that ended in 2020 with the club securing an Interim Charging Order against Hoff-Nielsen for $4040. The lodging of a Personal Properties Security Register (PPSR) claim against Tana personally, and E-Cycles NZ, dating back to 2017, laid by Australian bike wholesaler Sheppard Bikes. A further 11 PPSR claims were lodged against E-Cycles between 2019 and 2023 including by Shimano, Watt Wheels and Phoenix Bikes. The PPSR allows someone to claim an interest over the collateral belonging to someone who owes them a debt. The IRD withdrew liquidation proceedings against E-Cycles NZ in May 2023 after agreeing a settlement with Hoff-Nielsen. by Hoff-Nielsen and Tana for work he did setting up their businesses. Sarsfield estimated the debt at a “few thousand dollars” but said he had nothing in writing and he had long since written it off. Stuff has previously asked Hoff-Nielsen about Sarsfield without a response.
The Green Party did not respond to queries about Vaassen, and said it could not locate Duvnjak’s email and their co-leaders, Marama Davidson and Chloe Swarbrick, had “no prior knowledge” of it.
In a statement, their director of communications, Danny Stevens, said: “The independent investigation is looking into extremely serious allegations about Darleen’s husband’s business and precisely what Darleen knew about these matters and when. Our priority right now is ensuring there is a fair process for this independent investigation."
Tana was suspended by the Green Party earlier this month after a Stuff investigation revealed that the company she founded with Hoff-Nielsen, E-Cycles NZ Ltd, faced Employment Relations Authority claims from two migrant workers who both alleged they were exploited.
One of those workers, Santiago latour Palma, claimed he was owed wages and had worked while on a visitor visa, including on a work trial overseen by Tana, and had also been paid cash.