Police target more assets of jailed finance director

Capital + Merchant director Neal Nicholls in the dock at Auckland High Court. Photo / File

Police are targeting more assets associated with a businessman serving the longest prison sentence given to any failed finance company director.

Capital + Merchant Finance director Neal Nicholls was jailed in 2012 for eight and a half years after being found guilty on Serious Fraud Office charges and admitting allegations brought by the Financial Markets Authority.

Last year a High Court judge made restraining orders over a term deposit associated with a company Nicholls is the sole shareholder of.

Those orders are still in place but police are now also targeting two properties they allege are linked to the jailed director, lawyer Katie Hogan told the Herald.

Police have applied for restraining orders over funds in a lawyer's trust account,
All the orders sought are under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act.

Hogan would not reveal how much the assets are worth and suppression orders are in place about one of the properties.

The police's application for the restraining orders was filed last month and mentioned briefly before Justice Kit Toogood in the High Court Auckland this morning. The case is due to come back to the court later this month.

Assets associated with former C+M director Wayne Douglas - Nicholls partner-in-crime - have already been forfeited to the Crown and earlier this year police cut a deal with the owners of two properties linked to him.

The parties agreed a cheaper property linked to Douglas should be forfeited to the Crown and another almost three times the value not be targeted.

A profit forfeiture order was made in connection with a Whangaparaoa property which Douglas bought in 2008 and had a capital value of $560,000 as of 2011.

The deal meant that another property linked to Douglas with a capital value of $1.5 million was removed from the scope of police restraining orders.

Douglas is serving a jail term of eight years two months and was sentenced the same time as Nicholls.