Darleen Tana's husband, Christian Hoff-Nielsen, represented himself at a fines hearing and says he doesn't expect peace and quiet for a while but is grateful for the support of friends. Photo / Alex Burton
Darleen Tana's husband, Christian Hoff-Nielsen, represented himself at a fines hearing and says he doesn't expect peace and quiet for a while but is grateful for the support of friends. Photo / Alex Burton
Christian Hoff-Nielsen says he is approaching bankruptcy, is no longer in a romantic relationship with wife Darleen Tana and has slammed the Green Party investigation into what Tana knew about the e-bike business at the centre of political scandal.
Hoff-Nielsen was said to have been in Europe, according tosome recent reports, but appeared in the Auckland District Court this afternoon.
He was told to do 80 hours of community service for parking fines.
A magistrate said the fines amounted to $4385 but Hoff-Nielsen queried why he was being held liable for all that when employees were sometimes using the vehicles in question.
“I am really s*** at defending myself, as you just saw in court,” he said. “And that’s come to hurt me. As much as I’m really good at riding a bike, I’m no good in court.”
Christian Hoff-Nielsen said it was crazy to suggest he shared every detail of work with his wife, embattled MP Darleen Tana. Photo / Alex Burton
His surname had been entered by the court on a list as “Hoff-Nielson” and he previously had a hearing date on June 7 at the same court. The case was a fines dispute hearing – a civil matter, not a criminal one.
In court, Hoff-Nielsen represented himself and told Community Magistrate Jan Holmes he’d prepared evidence but things went awry.
“I had to put my company into liquidation on the 16th of July,” he told the court. He indicated there had been problems with a lawyer or legal assistant he’d been working on his defence with.
He said he was in no position to pay, due to financial problems. The magistrate said if he could not pay he must do 80 hours of community service.
Outside court, after a hearing that lasted about five minutes, Hoff-Nielsen said he was upset with the system and went through hell in recent months.
“I was naive in thinking I could defend myself.”
Asked if he and Tana were still together, he said: “As friends, but this has romantically made it impossible. We still have dinner.”
Former Green list MP Darleen Tana in her seat at the back of the debating chamber, known as "Siberia", on July 13. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Hoff-Nielsen said he felt Tana was getting support despite having been in the spotlight for negative reasons.
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has said Tana was not truthful in relation to what she knew about migrant worker exploitation allegations at Hoff-Nielsen’s e-bike shop.
“It’s not for me to say what I think about them,” Hoff-Nielsen said when asked about the Greens leadership.
Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick in July, when she said she'd sent a further email to Darleen Tana asking her to respond to the Green Party’s call for her to resign. Photo / Mark Mitchell
He said “a lot of the Greens” supported him but added: “What is surprising is that whole process of vilification.”
Any suggestion Tana knew many details of his e-bike business was ridiculous, he said.
A report by lawyer Rachel Burt found Tana continued her involvement with her husband’s e-cycles company despite selling shares in 2019.
But Hoff-Nielsen said the investigation did not include interviews with key staff.
He said he and Tana were together 26 years and like many long marriages, the key was not bringing office problems home.
“You don’t take all those problems with you, and for Chlöe to doubt that, I don’t know what to say.”
He said this applied to work details such as “some young person that’s worked for you for four months that’s suddenly saying ‘I didn’t get paid on the Tuesday’.”
He said some former workers took a long time to complain about allegedly not being paid, which was perplexing. “It doesn’t take six months for somebody to realise ‘I wasn’t paid’.”
A former colleague has disputed that and told the Herald in March: “I did call him out for a lot of the stuff he was doing, in relation to things like not being paid on time. We had to remind him to pay us.”
An employment dispute with Argentine migrant Santiago Latour Palma was central to the worker exploitation allegations which have since engulfed the Greens and forced the party to reconsider its decades-old support for the waka-jumping rule in Parliament.
Hoff-Nielsen suggested his lack of specialist legal knowledge had counted against him in Employment Court and related hearings.
Christian Hoff-Neilsen's e-bike store in Newmarket pictured in March with a "staff wanted" sign in the window. Photo / Jason Oxenham
“I think the legal system by and large favours the people that specialise in these different things and I was maybe thinking I could defend myself. I come from Denmark, where we trust people.”
Asked where he had been recently, Hoff-Nielsen said: “I’m conceiving bikes. I’m a designer, that’s what I do. I make bikes.”
He added: “I’m not going to have peace and quiet for the next year.”
On his e-bike business problems, he said the company had struggled since Covid arrived, just as many other firms had, and adverse publicity since March had made things worse.
“I can’t hire anyone. That’s the real reason why we went belly up.
“As all the staff were leaving, I could not replenish, because as you looked up my name or my company it looked like I wasn’t going to pay the new employee. My reputation is completely dead. I don’t think I could give away ice cream on a sunny day.”
He said that in hindsight, maybe he should have spent more time on some employment issues but he felt the Employment Relations Authority had not allowed him to bring all the witnesses he wanted.
“The two cases that we lost, we lost.”
He said these cases cost him about $30,000 and that included grievance payments “inflated by obscene amounts”.
Asked if he was bankrupt, he said: “I will be at this rate because of course I’m presently liable ... all my employees got a visa that I paid for because we were accredited.”
Hoff-Nielsen said the bike business was in voluntary liquidation.
He said he was still interested in environmental issues but was stressed out and had been under pressure since Covid arrived.
Asked if he would stay in New Zealand for the long run, he said: “That’s for my kids to decide ... they like New Zealand, that’s where we are.”
John Weekes, online business editor, has covered rounds including court and consumer affairs for more than a decade.
