By BERNARD ORSMAN
Auckland Mayor John Banks' private business life was laid bare in the High Court yesterday with stories of greed, money laundering and leases on luxury cars.
Dressed in a dark suit, pale lilac shirt and Louis Vuitton Cup silk tie, Mr Banks spent the day in the court at Auckland giving evidence against a bee pollen company he formerly owned.
He accused his former partner, 27-year-old lawyer Ben Cook, of unparalleled greed, systematically cheating a supplier of bee pollen, planning to import cheap bee pollen from China, and laundering money through a secret bank account.
Mr Cook murmured in disagreement throughout the proceedings, prompting Mr Banks to ask to be heard above the "sniggering and laughing at the back of the court".
Mr Banks was giving evidence against Topline International, which stands accused of falsely marketing its Nature Bee Potentiated Bee Pollen capsules.
Mr Banks was the main shareholder in Topline until about two months ago, when he sold his 40 per cent holding back to the company, run by father-and-son team Jeff and Ben Cook of Remuera.
Christchurch scientist Dr Kelvin Duncan is suing Topline for falsely marketing its bee pollen as having been treated by a potentiation process he invented.
His company, Cellular Improvements, has not supplied Topline for about a year.
Topline has filed a counter claim.
Armed with two piles of documents - and accompanied to court by mayoral press officer Cameron Brewer - Mr Banks said that after buying into the company in December 2000 he formed a view within the first week that Ben Cook was "out of control".
However, he told the court he had had a lot of good times with Mr Cook and they shared a passion for cars. The company paid a $39,000 annual lease on Mr Banks' $500,000 V8 Bentley Arnage.
Mr Banks thought the company had an agreement to buy potentiated pollen exclusively from Cellular.
He promoted the product as "coming from the hills and valleys of sunny Nelson as potentiated by Dr Kelvin Duncan, the dean of science at Canterbury University".
However, he became aware that the company was also buying "ultra" pollen, treated by a different process, from Waitakere Holdings. Mr Banks said this product was $1 a bottle cheaper than Dr Duncan's.
Topline lawyer David Hurd later produced a document showing the price difference was 13c.
Mr Banks said this "systematic cheating" of Dr Duncan and plans to import pollen from China were motivated by unparalleled greed.
The Chinese pollen plan "would enable us to make substantially more money than the substantial amount of money being generated by this business". Mr Banks said that at this point he wanted out.
Furthermore, he accused Mr Cook of commissioning a "biased" consultant's report on the business, which recommended making Mr Banks redundant as joint managing director, cutting his pay by 80 per cent, and putting Mr Cook's wage up to $10,000 a week.
This and "money laundering" by Mr Cook into a secret bank account to pay for boats and other personal expenditure milked Mr Banks' investment in the business, he said.
During cross-examination from Mr Hurd, Mr Banks said that after he became aware Topline was selling Waitakere pollen as potentiated, he raised the issue on several occasions.
But when asked by Mr Hurd to produce records of this, Mr Banks was unable to do so.
"Very rarely did we keep records," he said.
Mr Hurd said if Mr Cook, who has already given evidence, was allowed to be recalled, he would tell the court that at no point had Topline purchased bee pollen from China. The company was investigating the possibility to supply overseas markets.
Mr Hurd said the so-called secret bank account was an old one from Nature Bee days. A Chinese export customer had paid money into the account and the proceeds had been reconciled through Mr Cook's current account to Topline.
Mr Banks described the explanation as a "joke".
John Banks tells court ex-business partner was a greedy cheat
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