Former policeman John Dewar at his home in 2010. Photo / NZME
Former rogue cop John Dewar can now be revealed as the Hamilton businessman who has been fighting theft and fraud charges.
Dewar, 73, was jailed in 2007 for his cover-up of Louise Nicholas’ rape allegations against officers Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton.
The trio were subsequently cleared of raping her, but a jury found Dewar guilty of four charges of perverting the course of justice.
Dewar maintained his innocence but said he would take the sentence “like a man”.
When he left the force in 1999, after 25 years, Dewar was given a $250,000-plus payout despite being investigated for over-claiming on travel expenses.
But in 2004, it emerged that he had been involved in covering up Nicholas’ allegations against the officers.
The sentencing judge, Justice Rodney Hansen, said the aggravating features of Dewar’s crime were overwhelming.
It had harmed Nicholas psychologically and financially, and had also damaged the reputation of several institutions.
Now, Dewar has been back before the courts, spending eight days defending theft and obtaining by deception charges.
Dewar was on trial for three charges, each of theft by a person in a special relationship and of obtaining by deception, between 2015 and 2018.
The charges relate to his time as a chief executive of a company from which he stole about $111,000 to help pay off a personal loan and to buy weed killer, a spray unit, a toastie machine maker, and Hush Puppies shoes.
Part of his defence was that he was never told not to act in the way he did.
The jury began their deliberations at 4.40pm yesterday before returning with their verdicts at 4.25pm today.
Dewar was convicted and remanded on bail for sentencing in June.
In his closing to the jury, Dewar admitted he’d “struggled” having to represent himself in the proceedings.
“I probably should have gotten a lawyer,” he said.
Throughout his closing, he admitted there was a “blurring of lines”, that his management of the company was “chaotic” and “inept”.
He said he was simply doing a “good deed” for a finance broker who he’d offered to go 50-50 on fees as he was going “through a hard time”.
“All I did was try to help [the broker] through a hard time by putting some work his way ... but it’s not a crime.
“I helped him out because he was having trouble surviving ... and maybe that was a bad call from me, but I didn’t obtain anything [fraudulently].
“I obtained nothing whatsoever.”
After listening to the witnesses – comprising board members, a staff member, and the finance broker – he accepted that it appeared as though he ran the company “in an autocratic style”.
Dewar said the board never said he couldn’t act in the way that he did and admitted making the purchases and cashing cheques.
“I am disappointed in myself that I let them down and didn’t do a good job.
“That makes me a bad manager, but it does not make me guilty of these charges.”
He said he made all the purchases, including the weedeater and Hush Puppies shoes, but he never made any false representations.
He cited a former staff member’s evidence, who confirmed that he did all the cleaning and maintenance.
“I cleaned the toilet and vacuumed.”
As for the cash cheques, Dewar said it was “pretty obvious” he couldn’t confirm where the money ended up.
“It doesn’t look so good, but you heard the evidence of [a staffer] where the payments of cash and cheques being made to brokers and [others].
“I ran [the company] like it was my baby.”
But Crown solicitor Tom Sutcliffe said there “clearly was” an expectation by the company’s board of directors that their company would be run “in an ethical way with best practice in mind”.
A board of director, in his evidence, earlier read out an excerpt from Dewar‘s employment contract to the jury stating that the employee shall comply with reasonable and lawful instructions.
The board expected the company to be run “ethically, responsibly, and lawfully, and complying with the requirements of the industry”.
“For a man of [Dewar’s] experience, you could not have expected them to think anything else,” Sutcliffe said.
Sutcliffe said the allegations were things that they wouldn’t expect a CEO to do, and if he did, he should have kept a record of where the money went.
“These are basic duties of the CEO of a finance company.”
The Crown didn’t need to prove that the defendant benefited from money allegedly taken; it was simply the fact that he took it.
“[The board] should have been able to look at the ledger, and it should have told them where the money had gone.”
As for his defence that he was never told not to act in that way, Sutcliffe said: “Why would you have to spell that out for a CEO of a company?”
As for the obtain by deception charges, relating to Dewar allegedly giving himself a benefit by cashing the $600 broker fee cheques, the board knew nothing of his deal with the finance broker.
“It was quite deliberate and intentional.”
The defendant would have known that using company money to put towards his own loan was a conflict of interest, Sutcliffe submitted.
“You just can’t treat it like your own revolving credit facility.
“[Dewar] can’t claim ignorance, he’s an experienced operator and made conscious decisions to operate like that,” Sutcliffe alleged.
Paying company funds against his own loan “beggars belief quite frankly”, he said.
As for the Hush Puppies shoes and care kit, the defendant suggested they were “safety boots”.
“How could Hush Puppies be a business expense for a finance company?” Sutcliffe said.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for 10 years and has been a journalist for 20.
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