Hide: Strip Sir Douglas Graham of knighthood

Rodney Hide is calling for Sir Douglas Graham to be stripped of his knighthood. Photo / File

Former minister Rodney Hide is calling for Sir Douglas Graham to be stripped of his knighthood after he and three other directors of failed company Lombard Finance were yesterday sentenced for misleading investors.

Graham and Lawrence Bryant were each sentenced to 300 hours of community work and ordered to pay $100,000 reparation.

Another former justice minister, Bill Jeffries, and Michael Reeves were each sentenced to 400 hours of community work.

Speaking on Radio New Zealand this morning, former Act Party MP Rodney Hide said Douglas should lose his knighthood.

"Sir Douglas Graham was a trophy director and an investor would look at him and say 'well here's a person who's a knight of the realm sitting on this company' - it gives the investor greater confidence. Well, that turns out to be false and it turns out that Douglas Graham has been convicted of making untrue statements to investors and I think that he should actually turn his knighthood in and certainly the Prime Minister should tell the Queen to remove it."

If he kept the knighthood it would sully every other person who had been bestowed the honour, Mr Hide said.

A spokesman for Prime Minister John Key, the only person able to strip knighthoods, said he was unable to comment on matters relating to Graham until any possible appeals had been dealt with.

The four directors were last month found guilty of making untrue statements about Lombard's position in its offer documents in December 2007.

During the directors' eight-week trial, evidence was given that Lombard sales staff were still soliciting investment from members of the public in March 2008, less than a month before the decision by the firm's trustees to call in receivers.

The Lombard collapse, one of many finance company failures between 2007 and 2009, left 4400 investors owed $127 million.