Bridgecorp staff ordered to lie to investors: witness

Rod Petricevic. Photo / APN

A group of Bridgecorp staff refused to answer their phones when the finance company missed a set of payments, and believed management was telling them to lie to investors, a court has been told.

Bridgecorp directors Rod Petricevic, Rob Roest and Peter Steigrad have each denied 10 Securities Act charges of making untrue statements in the offer documents of Bridgecorp and Bridgecorp Investments.

They are standing trial in in the High Court at Auckland in a hearing expected to last until March.

Petricevic and Roest also face eight charges under the Crimes Act and Companies Act of knowingly making false statements in offer documents that Bridgecorp had never missed interest payments or repayments of principal to investors.

Bridgecorp collapsed in July 2007 owing $459 million to 14,500 investors.

The Financial Markets Authority has alleged the company began missing payments from February 2007.

Crown witness and former Bridgecorp employee Delia Joan Snyman said yesterday that she first became aware of the missed payments in February.

She said phone staff were instructed to tell callers the payments were delayed by a "computer glitch" or problems in the accounts department.

When Bridgecorp missed a large number of payments due at the end of March, she said her entire team refused to take calls and took their phones off the hook.

She said she heard a colleague tell a manager: "I'm not going to answer any more phone calls. We keep on lying to investors and it's not right."

Staff from other parts of the office then came in to take investors' calls, Ms Snyman said.

Despite the missed payments, she said Bridgecorp continued to take new investments until June 29, 2007.