Mark Hotchin and the New Zealand Police State – No Charges to be Laid.

On news being reported by NBR this morning (paid content) that the Serious Fraud Office might well be reporting Tuesday they cannot make a case against finance company director, Mark Hotchin, and therefore, will not be laying charges despite his assets having been frozen by the state for closing in on three years – yes, three years, and still counting - I am repeating my last two posts on the case of Mr Hotchin, being the proof of the state’s disdain for the rule of law in New Zealand, (no matter what you might think of Mr Hotchin), and evidence of the police-state that our society has become.

Note that, yes, it was the Financial Markets Authority, FMA, (see below) that instituted the freeze, which holds until the FMA civil case against the directors of Hanover is held - whenever that will be - however, that is worse, for the civil action is inappropriate in itself, and particularly the freeze because of that fact, alone, regardless of the amount of time that has now transpired, for in a society under the rule of law, the state has no place in the civil prosecution of Hanover - see points (1) and (2) in the below post.

Given the harm the state has done to Mr Hotchin by the fruitless action so far in the criminal jurisdiction, does anyone know what avenues an individual in this scenario has for restitution?

Update 1 at bottom of post, regarding SFO transcript published Tuesday, 30 April, 2013. 

Previous posts follow:

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Hotchin Reprise: End of the Rule of Law - A Kiwi Fair Go 

This being the first day of June, 2012, I am simply publishing a piece I first penned December, 2011, to mark the then first twelve months of ex-Finance Company director Mark Hotchin's asset freeze, not only without trial, but without a charge having been laid. Nothing has changed from when I wrote this; Hotchin now enters his nineteenth month without any criminal charge by the state, and it's sadly looking like, when his assets and his - and his families - lives were frozen, the state had no criminal case in prospect of prosecution. What a shameful indictment of the (lack of) the rule of law in New Zealand, as I define this in my article following.

I don't know Mark Hotchin, I'm neither defending nor attacking him: we simply owe it to ourselves to dispassionately understand the nature of the society we live in, and most of us would know what sort of a state practices detention without trial; well, an asset freeze with neither trial nor charge, for nineteen months, is a police state. When we smugly watch the nascent protests against Putin in Russia, and draw the obvious conclusions about that state, we are all missing the jackboots standing inside every room in New Zealand.

More and more I ask myself how can this happen? Every NBR and interest.co.nz thread about Hotchin is full of personal vitriol against the man, with no one seemingly able to grasp the desperate principles underneath his frozen life. I suspect it just shows how slavish as a society we have become behind the IRon Drape, in which the unprincipled hate of people laughing at the state-built gallows of their own lives, is part of the course in a country where a vigilante TV show consistently tops the weekly ratings.

Anyway, I paste my previous article below: Hotchin, and the end of the rule of law behind the IRon Drape in New Zealand. (Note this was first published in Lindsay Perigo's SOLO, and in that piece referred to the first version of this [now resurrected] blog).


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To some, the concept of the rule of law is hard to pin down. But I don't think so. In 1610, James I of England described it thus - remembering historical context please:

Amongst many other points of happiness and freedom which your majesty's subjects of this kingdom have enjoyed under your royal progenitors, kings and queens of this realm, there is none which they have accounted more dear and precious than this, to be guided and governed by the certain rule of the law which giveth both to the head and members that which of right belongeth to them, and not by any uncertain or arbitrary form of government....

As an Objectivist Libertarian, this notion of not being victim to arbitrary government - now channeling in Hotchin's case the venomous tyranny of the majority - together with the classical liberal maxim I quoted on my Lyttelton thread that all individuals have rights and responsibilities, and it is the job of the state (small s ) only to protect those rights, not to assume those responsibilities, and lastly, combined with the further ethic that a free state is grounded on the non-initiation of force or fraud principle, including particularly force of government on the governed, give the height, width and breadth of what is meant by the rule of law.

It has become clear to me, however, that New Zealand falls far short of this, and the single case of Hotchin keeps coming back as the festering sore to show the lie of it. Just under one month ago, I wrote in this blog:

Nothing attracted vitriol to my old blog Life Behind the IRon Drape more than the pieces I wrote on Mark Hotchin and Allan Hubbard (no relation). I may soon put them up again here, over December. For the coming one year anniversary I'm writing of is the freeze that was put on Mark Hotchin's assets over December, 2010. I have no idea whether Hotchin will be found wanting in respect of the laws of New Zealand, but he has now had his life frozen by the State for a year and not only has never been given the chance to defend himself in court, he's still not had a single charge laid against him.

To me, this denotes a State with far more power than I'm comfortable with, and no justice for the individual of Mark Hotchin, no matter what you think of him. The champagne thieving bureaucrats at the SFO need to charge Hotchin, or not, and give him his day in court (and unlike Mr Hubbard, don't make him have to sue to use his own money to defend himself). This isn't Putin's Russia, is it? It's New Zealand. Perhaps the difference is far less than we would all like to think.

Well, we've now reached the one year anniversary, and the only marker to this is New Zealand's new huge bureaucracy, the FMA - Financial Markets Authority - announcing that in the new year they're going to launch a civil case against Hotchin on behalf of Hanover's investors.

Wait a minute: what?

These are the questions I would like answered:

1) I contend the rule of law does not encompass the State taking a civil case, using taxpayer money, against Hanover. Surely this is outside the role of the State in a free country, as the losses borne are between Hanover and its investors: it's a private matter to those two parties, to be worked out through civil claims. The FMA should take no civil case for the same reason not one government should have bailed out one bank, and New Zealand should never have had legislated the Deposit Guarantee Scheme, with the disastrous unintended consequences it entailed. That is, just as the State and the Church were separated historically, to further the cause of freedom, so now must the state be separated from the economy and functioning of a free market, by which I mean, given the market is simply where individual needs and desires find their expression and resolution, separated from the lives of individuals, period.

2) My real concern, Mr Hotchin has had his assets frozen for over one year now, and still no criminal fraud charge has been laid, and prosecution of same would be the only appropriate role of state (which civil cases may well flow from). Nobody seems to have difficulty understanding that detention without trial is a practice that denotes the totalitarian State, not a state of freedom, well, how is Mr Hotchin having his life effectively frozen for over one year without a trial, or even a charge, any different (no matter what you might think of the man)? Does he get access to his funds to fight the State now in this civil case? Surely, even if it were legitimate the State take the civil case - it's not, but bear with me - then any criminal wrongdoing must be proven first?

To this individual, who values his freedom more than anything else, the frozen Mr Hotchin is deeply unsettling. Mixing a quotation from a famous contemporary of James I,'something is rotten in the state of New Zealand'; I wonder if we'll finally smell the truth of it after Mr Hotchin has been thawed out, whenever this arbitrary Nanny State decides on its whim to do so?



Postscript:

A clarification, per my post below. The SFO is still to report (I'm assuming), but that doesn't change the fact the FMA should not be making the civil claim: if the prospectuses held fabrications, then that's a criminal matter of fraud, and it's down to the SFO only. Surely that's the only legitimate role for the State? The FMA is a 'worrying' new branch of State power in New Zealand, especially when, already, less than a few months since its inception, its muddying the waters like this by taking the civil case. 

Update 1: SFO Statement.

The SFO statement is now made, and is posted to interest.co.nz here.

What an appalling statement from a government bureaucracy. It puts the boot in on emotive terms in every paragraph, smearing all the time the reputations of those involved, and then states they can't make a case.  

That is: they can't make a case. End of.

No members of a ministry should be using such emotive terms when there is no case to answer to, and it's not as if they've not put the hours into it. The entire notion of innocent until proven guilty, or in this case, even charged, doesn’t seem to exist in New Zealand anymore, and this from government officials.

And I know and understand the vitriol that will flow to myself, and Hotchin from this release, and this comment, however, think what you will of Hotchin, I don’t know the man, but the state has just shown they can freeze your assets, which is to freeze your life, for almost three years, not only without charge, but obviously when the freeze was first put on, without even a case to be had - that freeze must have been on emotive whim, also, just as I have been saying since the first year of the freeze.

The case only proves the disdain the state operates regarding the rule of law, and how we as a society are far closer to a police state, than a free society. And again, per my piece above, the FMA’s civil case is wholly inappropriate to a free society living under the rule of law.

I hope the MSM are going to pull the SFO apart, and the government that did this.


Cactus Kate sums the result up well:

32 months,107,000 pages, 3,730 gb over 12,700 hours. 54 interviews over 120 hours, more than 30 individual loans = nothing but a witch hunt
— Cactus Kate (@CactusKate2) April 29, 2013