OneWorld admit keeping Team NZ secrets on disk

By HELEN TUNNAH and AP

A designer for OneWorld Challenge kept Team New Zealand secrets on a computer disk, according to fresh evidence which has forced the team to admit for a second time that they have broken America's Cup rules.

OneWorld yesterday appealed to the America's Cup Arbitration Panel not to punish them harshly, arguing they have already suffered enough.

While OneWorld today sail against Prada in the challenger series semifinals, the five-member panel will resume deliberations on the team's fate - and whether they should heed calls for OneWorld to be thrown out of the regatta.

Team Dennis Conner and Prada have asked for OneWorld to be disqualified for possessing and using three other teams' design secrets. They also claim OneWorld failed to declare everything they had from other syndicates at a previous panel hearing which found they had broken cup rules.

Team New Zealand said then they believed the data OneWorld held was significant and extensive.

OneWorld have denied misleading the panel, but at a weekend hearing on the case, designer Ian Mitchell admitted keeping a computer disk containing several Team New Zealand files.

Mitchell, a yacht designer who worked for Team New Zealand in the 1995 and 2000 Cups, had not mentioned having the disk in two affidavits he declared which were submitted for the first case.

In his third affidavit presented to the panel yesterday, Mitchell said he had kept a back-up disk from his days at Team New Zealand, which included six or eight of their files. They contained substantial design and structural information.

Giving evidence under oath before the panel, Mitchell said he never used the information.

"After the 2000 Cup, the disk was simply left at my house in Auckland. I never used it again," his affidavit said. "I didn't take the disk with me when I moved to Seattle."

Mitchell said he later destroyed the disk. He also declared he had structural files for Team New Zealand from 1995 on an old computer he no longer used.

After being questioned by the five-member panel, OneWorld lawyer Iain Thain said the retention of the disk did break the rules and should have been admitted in the previous case.

However he said the panel should not impose a harsh penalty because OneWorld had already suffered significantly from the controversy, and was docked one competition point and fined for breaking the rules the first time.

The three overseas members of the panel are due to leave New Zealand this afternoon, and it is not clear if they will have had enough time to consider the case by then.

However, officials have decided this week's semifinals will go ahead as scheduled, pending the outcome of the panel hearing.

After the first case, the panel said obtaining another team's design information gave a syndicate an advantage it was not entitled to.

"How it might use this information in the evolution of a yacht's design will always be difficult to determine objectively.

"Consequently, in the panel's view, the mere wrongful possession of such information must call for the imposition of a significant penalty."

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

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