Police seek $10m of property linked to alleged Head Hunter gang president Wayne Doyle

Police talk with alleged Head Hunter president Wayne Doyle while searching the gang's headquarters on Marua Rd in 2017. Photo / NZME

Members and associates of the Head Hunters give 20 per cent of their criminal earnings to the gang - a portion of which flows into the coffers of the alleged president - according to the police investigation trying to seize $10 million worth of assets.

The claim is made in the case against Wayne Doyle, whom police allege is the national president of the notorious motorcycle gang, in civil proceedings taken under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act.

Five properties across Auckland, including the gang's Marua Rd headquarters in Ellerslie, have been frozen since September 2017, when the High Court granted restraining orders after a police investigation, Operation Coin, into his financial affairs.

While a number of senior Head Hunters have been jailed in recent years for serious methamphetamine and violence offences, Doyle - who was jailed for murder in the 1980s - has not been convicted of anything for more than 20 years.

Although not alleged to be personally responsible for the criminal activity of other Head Hunters, the thrust of the police case is that Doyle received significant financial benefits because of his status as the alleged leader of the gang.

These alleged payments allowed him to accrue the restrained properties, now valued at more than $10m, despite having declared no income for many years, according to the police.

The court case has dragged on for nearly five years already. The trial has been postponed twice, but a judge-alone hearing has been scheduled for October next year.

However, new details of the allegations against Doyle are contained in judgments from the High Court and a recent Court of Appeal published online.

In a hearing last May, Doyle's lawyer Ron Mansfield QC tried to persuade a High Court judge that the police had not provided enough details of the allegations against his client.

Mansfield asked Justice Timothy Brewer to order the police to file a "statement of claim" with specific details, as there were 33 affidavits containing 9000 pages of evidence, as a matter of fairness.

"It is no answer...for the Commissioner to assert that the particulars are 'in the evidence'. There are 9000 pages of evidence," Mansfield said.

"Thousands more pages of disclosure have subsequently been drip fed...it is not for the respondents to sift through this volume of material and guess as to what the Commissioner's case may be."

Responding on behalf of the police, Mark Harborow said the original application for the asset forfeiture was detailed, with the 33 affidavits containing the supporting evidence, as well as a 21-page letter which "fills the gaps" if there was any uncertainty.

In discussing the competing arguments, Justice Brewer said Operation Coin was a more complex case than many others brought under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act and was largely a circumstantial case.

However, Justice Brewer said there was a "great deal" of detailed information in support of the police application, particularly the affidavit of Detective Stephen Peat, and dismissed the application.

The Court of Appeal upheld the decision in a ruling released in January and directed Doyle to pay the legal fees of the police.

While Justice Brewer described the Operation Coin case as largely circumstantial, his ruling contains previously unreported details about four specific allegations.

According to the police, Doyle received $275,973 in welfare payments over two decades in which he failed to declare cash and other assets he held an interest in.

The police also allege the Head Hunters obtained a further $425,219 from the "misappropriation" of the property of Duncan McFarlane.

A Wellington businessman with underworld links, McFarlane died in 2011 but was listed on Companies Office records for the entities linked to Doyle at the centre of Operation Coin.

In the third specific allegation, the Head Hunters allegedly "taxed" $465,800 from the criminal network which made millions of dollars selling designer drugs that competed with Ecstasy and other party drugs.

The syndicate was targeted by police in Operation Ark although not before the Head Hunters were allegedly paid $10,000 a week in a practice known in the criminal underworld as "taxing".

Criminals pay "tax" to other criminals in fear of physical violence and the intimidation is reported to police only rarely, for fear of further retribution and exposing their own criminal behaviour.

In another so-called taxing, six Head Hunters allegedly kidnapped a drug dealer who owed them money. He was forced to rob other drug dealers to repay his debt and netted a total of $290,000.

Doyle allegedly requested those Head Hunters to pay a donation to the gang which the police claim was $58,000, as Head Hunters are alleged to give 20 per cent of their criminal earnings to the gang.

The police do not contend Doyle was personally responsible for all the criminal activity that produced the financial benefits he allegedly received.

Instead, the police claim Doyle received a portion of the criminal profits obtained by other members of the gang, which he used to purchase his property portfolio - which are now worth more than $10m.

"The stakes are therefore high and the respondents stand to lose assets having very significant value if they cannot successfully counter the [Police] Commissioner's claims," wrote Justice Graham Lang, in another judgment which granted Doyle more time to prepare his defence.

Part of the circumstantial evidence in Operation Coin is that Doyle allegedly derived a financial benefit from $349,545 deposited into the bank accounts of That Was Then This Is Now, a charitable trust run by the Head Hunters.

The payments were marked as "rent" but the police allege some of the deposits were the proceeds of offending by various gang members, such as drug dealing.

Doyle is alleged to control six companies and trusts, including That Was Then, This Is Now, which own four of the frozen properties.

About $19.9m was deposited into the bank accounts of the six entities associated with Doyle between 2002 and 2016 - half in cash - according to analysis by the Serious Fraud Office.

Nearly half of that, or $9.2m, was deposited into the accounts of That Was Then, This Is Now.

"Similarly, large sums of funds have been paid to Head Hunters members by the That Was Then This is Now Trust," Justice Geoffrey Venning wrote in his 2017 judgment which granted the restraining orders.

More than $9m was deposited into the Head Hunters' charitable trust, That Was Then This Is Now, according to police Operation Coin. Photo / Brett Phibbs

The judge said there also seemed to be a discrepancy of $2.4m between the trust's declared income and funds deposited into the bank account.

"There is an available inference the trusts have been involved in money laundering," said Justice Venning, who noted the charitable status was under review.

The trust deed states the charity wants to be a bridge between prison and the community by integrating former inmates into society through fitness.

At the time of the freezing orders, the gang had recently won an appeal in an ongoing legal battle after the trust was deregistered as a charity.

While noting Doyle was unable to contest the evidence at the time, Justice Venning was satisfied there were reasonable grounds to believe the properties linked to Doyle were acquired by significant criminal activity.

The properties were restrained under the Criminal Proceeds Recovery Act which essentially forces someone to prove how an asset was paid for.

More than $1 billion worth of real estate, luxury cars and cash are among the assets restrained from drug dealers, gangs and other criminal groups since the law Act was passed in late 2009.

The success of the New Zealand police in enforcing the law was "impressive", according to a report published this year by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which estimated 8 per cent of criminal profits were frozen each year. The global average is around 2.2 per cent.

Now, the Government plans to change the law to give police even more powers to target gang leaders, or organised crime figures, who have distanced themselves from any criminal activity but allegedly still reap the financial benefits.

Under the current law, police do not need a conviction. They only have to show that someone profited from criminal offending to the lower standard of proof applied in civil cases — "on the balance of probabilities" — rather than surpassing the more difficult "beyond reasonable doubt" threshold for criminal cases.

Under the proposed change to the law, the police would be able to ask the High Court to restrain - and later forfeit - the assets of anyone "associated" with an organised criminal group, if their declared income was insufficient to pay for them.

This is designed to target the leaders of gangs, and organised criminal groups, who the police allege have structured their affairs to "insulate" themselves from involvement, or even knowledge of, profit-driven crimes committed by their members.