By PAUL PANCKHURST
If sharebroker Benjamin J. Mauerberger visits New Zealand again he will find the authorities chasing him for a $30,000 fine as well as for details of two suspect broking operations.
In the Auckland District Court yesterday Mauerberger was convicted of failing to comply with a summons from the
Securities Commission and fined $30,000.
Commission chairwoman Jane Diplock said afterwards the commission was still keen to talk to Mauerberger and to see him pay his fine.
"We believe he has property in New Zealand and we are examining our options to recover what he owes," she said.
"Just because he has left the country it shouldn't be assumed he will escape unscathed."
The commission had summoned Mauerberger to appear before it in January during an investigation into Mauer-Swisse Securities, an Auckland-based sharebroking operating which went into liquidation last year.
It said it "suspected that Mauer-Swiss was running a boiler-room operation which made unsolicited calls to people in New Zealand and Australia offering dubious share deals".
The commission noted that in sentencing a cousin of Mauerberger, who was a director of Mauer-Swisse, a New South Wales judge had described the firm's investment scheme as bearing "all the depressing hallmarks of yet another bare-faced scam on a large scale".
The Business Herald reported in April that Mauerberger had set up a business called Bergers Securities, which also resembled the classic boiler-room operation, in serviced offices in the PricewaterhouseCoopers Tower in Auckland.
Last week PricewaterhouseCoopers said Bergers had gone into liquidation.
The commission said yesterday that it was also keen to talk to Mauerberger about his links with Bergers.
However "he left the country without appearing before the commission".
The commission said it was aware that Mauerberger previously worked for a Thai-based cold-calling broking firm, the Brinton Group, which was closed by Thai authorities two years ago.
