The prosecution of him and his company for operating heli-crayfish excursions for high-paying guests "wasn’t a great use of taxpayers’ money", a Queenstown hotelier says.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) took Mark Rose and The Rees Management Ltd to court for operating heli-crayfish excursions to Fiordland for high-paying guests, and illegally storing crayfish in a hotel freezer.
Rose, who remains a director of the company and was its general manager until the end of March, was discharged without conviction in the Queenstown District Court this week after admitting three charges of failing in his duty as director of a fish dealer.
The company was convicted and fined $22,000 on four charges of unlawfully possessing fish for sale and a single charge of a fish dealer failing to keep invoices for fish purchases.
MPI launched an investigation into the heli excursions in late 2022, which involved a third-party company flying small groups of the hotel’s guests to remote locations in Fiordland or the West Coast to watch a diver gather the crayfish.
The crayfish were later flown to the resort and cooked and served to the excursion participants.
After Mr Rose was warned by a fisheries officer in late 2021 that the excursions were illegal, he gave assurances he would get the third-party business operating them to ensure they were compliant.
MPI’s investigation was triggered after the excursions resumed.
Mr Rose suspected MPI thought there was a "huge ring" for illegal seafood.
When told to stop the trips, he did so immediately, only resuming when he had been assured by the third-party company that changes had been made.
MPI also prosecuted him for having three frozen crayfish in the hotel’s kitchen.
"If we were trying to do something illegal, we wouldn’t be freezing crayfish and then selling the bloody things, would we?"
He found MPI’s prosecution of him as a company director "pretty amazing".
"I’m 60-odd years of age, running a successful multimillion-dollar business and employing all the people that we do, we’re enmeshed in the community, we support charities and all sorts of stuff like that.
"Do you think I suddenly woke up one morning and thought, oh, ... I’m going to go out and break the law?"
Mr Rose said he had never been in a court before, and found the process "daunting".
"I felt like a criminal, and I really and truly didn’t think that I had done anything wrong.
"Everybody around me knows I wouldn’t do anything wrong, either.
"But I put my hand up, and I think that’s something more chief executives need to do."
The luxury hotel has won various awards, including a gong for leading New Zealand hotel at the 30th Annual World Travel Awards in 2023.
Mr Rose was named New Zealand’s hotel general manager of the year at the Australasian Hotel Management Awards in 2022.
In her sentencing comments, Judge Catriona Doyle said the offending appeared to be a case of negligence rather than "deliberately seeking to develop a profitable experience they knew would be unlawful".
The excursions the hotel’s guests went on only involved 23 crayfish, and the maximum recreational limit of six crayfish per diver was never exceeded.
Mr Rose had "high standing and significant mana in his community", with a strong record of work for charitable organisations, the judge said.
She granted him a discharge without conviction on the grounds the consequences of convictions at his stage of life, compared to the seriousness of the offending, would cause undue shame to him and his family.
MPI also laid charges against the third-party company that operated the heli excursions. That company is defending the charges.
