KEY POINTS:
Philip and Peter Vela lead the kind of life that most of us can only dream of.
The pair run very successful businesses and one of the country's best stud farms and spend most of the year overseas before returning home for the summer months.
What's more, their
colleagues say they're good blokes who are kind, generous and hard-working.
The Vela family hit the headlines earlier this week after the Dominion Post alleged they donated $150,000 from six different accounts over four years to New Zealand First leader Winston Peters.
The donations were not declared by NZ First because they were under $10,000 and did not need to be.
Joe Walls, racing auctioneer and chairman of New Zealand Bloodstock, told the Herald he had known the publicity-shy Vela brothers for more than 30 years.
He said the brothers were well-known for their charity sponsoring of racing and arts events.
"They're very generous people, absolutely top-class," he said.
Mr Walls said the success of the Velas, whose wealth is an estimated $180 million, was not surprising given their work ethic.
"That's really what they're like ... if they start something they really make a good go of it."
"But horse breeding and horse racing is their passion, they've come right from the bottom and are now almost singularly New Zealand's most successful breeders of top horses."
The Vela brothers' father, Filip, came to New Zealand in 1929 from a Croatian fishing village on the Dalmatian coast.
Mr Vela formed successful fishing companies, which his sons have developed and grown into Vela Fishing, one of the local industry's largest privately-owned companies.
Based in Hamilton, the company was taken over by Goodman Fielder in 1987 before the latter merged with Wattie Industries.
The Velas then bought it back for an undisclosed sum in 1991.
Hamilton Mayor Bob Simcock said he studied at Waikato University with Peter Vela, who eventually became a schoolteacher.
He could not put his finger on the secret of their success but said the brothers acquired "substantial" fishing quota, which he understood at the time was the largest privately accumulated quota in the country.
He said he didn't know what their business practices were but they were "phenomenally successful".
They began breeding racehorses as a hobby in 1970 when they borrowed a broodmare from a breeder. Ten years later, they started Pencarrow Stud near Cambridge, the highly successful breeding property where they base their broodmare band and yearlings.
In 1997 they bought a struggling Wrightson Bloodstock, which handles the New Zealand thoroughbred yearling sales at Karaka.
They renamed it New Zealand bloodstock and turned its fortunes around from a $30 million turnover in 1997 to more than $60 million in 2004.
Their mare Ethereal won the Melbourne and Caulfield Cups in 2001.
In 1998 the brothers attracted media attention when they became involved in a dispute with an English lord who claimed they had left his 15th century castle owing more than $19,000 in rent and shooting fees.
