Trustees set to counter Coutts claim

By HELEN TUNNAH

Team New Zealand's past trustees have vowed to put "the record straight" over claims they deliberately obstructed attempts by Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth to take over the America's Cup team.

Former Team New Zealand trust chairman Richard Green is expected to make a detailed statement tomorrow, rejecting Coutts' allegations.

The increased tensions between the Viaduct Harbour neighbours comes in the countdown to Coutts' new Swiss syndicate Alinghi racing Team New Zealand for the America's Cup next week.

On Friday, Coutts broke an almost three-year silence on his shock departure from the New Zealand team he twice helped to win the cup.

He said he and Butterworth quit after failing for two years to cement an agreement allowing them to take over the running of the team from Sir Peter Blake.

He blamed that failure on the persistent obstruction, extraordinary secretiveness over financial dealings and personal hostility directed at him and Butterworth by Mr Green and another former trustee, John Lusk.

Although Coutts had had a serious falling out with Sir Peter before the last cup, he effectively spared the former syndicate head any criticism in his long statement. Sir Peter was murdered in 2001.

Mr Green said at the weekend that Coutts' claims were "factually incorrect, self-serving and grossly misleading".

"It does a terrible disservice to the vision and principles on which Sir Peter Blake built Team New Zealand. We will be putting the record straight."

Another former trustee, and a close personal friend of Sir Peter, Sir Tom Clark, said he was "gobsmacked" and "shocked".

Sir Tom said Coutts had made Sir Peter's life "hell" for the last nine months of the 2000 America's Cup campaign.

Coutts and Sir Peter clashed over the direction of Team New Zealand, commitments to the "family of five" sponsors and over the monetary rewards the team's management received compared with senior sailors.

One claim is that Sir Peter and three other senior executives received $11 million from the 2000 campaign, almost one-quarter of the team's budget.

The chairman of the present trustees, Ralph Norris, said the distrust between the old trustees, Sir Peter and Coutts was a significant element in the breakdown in relationships within the team.

But he said he was not aware of any organised campaign to thwart the ambitions of Coutts and Butterworth taking over the team along with Tom Schnackenberg.

He said when Coutts telephoned him from New York to say he and Butterworth were leaving, he had said they had been made an offer "too good to turn down".

But Coutts' perspective has been given some support from prominent Auckland lawyer Jim Farmer, QC, who had negotiated for him, Butterworth and Schnackenberg for an agreement.

"There is no doubt that over the two years I was involved in this thing we got absolutely nowhere," Farmer told the Herald.

He said he did not know if Richard Green and John Lusk were a problem, as stated by Coutts.

"There was a whole heap of other people on the other side. There was them, there was the management of Peter Blake, Alan Sefton and so forth, there were the sponsors.

"Just who was driving the thing from the other side I can't say."

nzherald.co.nz/americascup

Racing schedule, results and standings