SFO announces SCF now under investigation

This will upset the cultists. The SFO has announced:

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) today announced that it had launched an investigation into South Canterbury Finance (SCF).

Chief Executive, Adam Feeley, said that as a result of inquiries made by its newly established Fraud Detection Unit, the SFO had grounds to suspect that a number of related party transactions involving SCF may have involved false statements or other fraudulent conduct.

“Given the scale of the SCF collapse, it would be neither feasible nor productive for SFO to carry out an investigation into all aspects of the failure. Instead we will focus on specific transactions which we consider may have been a fraud on the investors in SCF and/or the Crown as the guarantor of investor funds.”

Mr Feeley said that despite the volume of cases which SFO had taken up in recent months, the matter was one which would have a high priority and would be progressed as quickly as possible.

Also of interest:

Mr Feeley added that the SCF investigation was an entirely separate matter from the SFO’s investigation into the affairs of Aorangi Securities Limited.

“While there are some persons who are common to both cases, the SCF transactions we are currently investigating have no material connection with the affairs of Aorangi Securities.

Mr Feeley added that, subject to receiving any new information from the statutory managers, the SFO was in the closing stages of its investigation into Aorangi Securities.

Until their investigations are complete, it is hard to comment in great detail. But