An angry investor in the failed Blue Chip property investment company says she feels let down after the company's co-founder Mark Bryers avoided a jail term after pleading guilty to a number of financial reporting charges today.
Bryers was fined $37,500, ordered to pay $780 in court costs and also ordered to complete 75 hours of community work when he was sentenced on 34 charges by Judge Christopher Field in Auckland District Court today.
There were many audible reactions of disappointment from a huge gallery of investors but only one of the charges carried a potential jail term. None of the charges related specifically to the collapse of Blue Chip.
Judge Field told Bryers the failure of the Blue Chip companies had caused enormous hardship for many people but he said the charges he was being sentenced on today were for inadequate financial reporting and failing to attend creditors' meetings and were not related to the failure of the companies.
"You failed utterly in your obligations as a company director," he told Bryers after ordering him to stand in the dock for sentencing.
"The sheer number of offences and the way in which it all came about represented an egregious lapse of duty."
Judge Field said he was handed about 100 pages of victim impact statements just before he was due to sentence Bryers, which he said he wanted to assure former investors he had read.
"It was a catastrophe for many and there was an overwhelming sense of bitterness in the letters and justifiably so," said Judge Field.
The bitterness was clear from many investors, many of whom could not fit into the small courtroom today.
One solidly built investor said he very much wanted to spend five minutes with Bryers, in a tone of voice that suggested he wasn't talking about a chat over a cup of tea.
Another called him "scum", while others expressed disbelief at the 20 percent discount which he received for his guilty plea (a discount which Judge Field said he must apply by law following a 2009 Court of Appeal decision) and at his reported expressions of remorse.
Serious Fraud Office boss Adam Feeley said earlier this month that he was waiting on external legal advice before making a decision on whether to lay charges against Blue Chip.
Ngaire Williams, who was brought up from Tauranga by her Taumarunui-based daughter Karina, said outside court that she hoped more serious charges would be laid.
"I feel absolutely let down by the justice system," she said after today's sentencing.
"We have ended up with fresh air, nothing else."
Mrs Williams said she and her husband thought Blue Chip looked a good investment and put up their house as equity only to lose badly out of it.
She said her husband had an aneurism on his aorta and her diabetes had got worse.
"It's our health that has been affected most, and my husband's back goes out quite often. I had to put it back in for him in the court today."
Tauranga woman Carol Corner, 74, said she and her husband Keith, 83, were not enjoying "one minute of their retirement" after losing more than $400,000 in the failed Blue Chip companies.
She said it was not so much the loss of money that had upset them in their retirement years.
"It is the loss of dignity."
She said they were now living in a "far less salubrious area than we have ever lived in our lives".
She said Bryers showed no remorse at all as he sat in the dock for the two-hour hearing.
"When we saw him coming in he had a big smile on his face.
"I would have quite liked to have poked him in the eye," Mrs Corner told NZPA, as Bryers was escorted out a back door by police and into a waiting car.
Bryers is understood to be earning up to $12,000 a month in Sydney as a consultant to Northern Crest Investments and as a bankrupt his affairs are being managed by the official assignee in New Zealand.
