The Hubbard charges

Stuff reports:

Allan Hubbard’s supporters have vowed to fight on for the 83-year-old financier facing 50 charges of fraud.

Yesterday the Serious Fraud Office laid the charges against Hubbard after a year-long investigation into his investment company, Aorangi Securities.

Aorangi has about 400 investors in the South Island who are owed $96 million and Hubbard has pledged up to $60 million of his own assets to help pay them back.

The charges come exactly a year after Hubbard and his wife Margaret, known as Jean, and their investment company Aorangi Securities and seven charitable trusts were placed in statutory management by the Government. Two other companies and two more trusts were added to the statutory management three months later.

The charges were laid under three sections of the Crimes Act which deal with theft by a person in a special relationship, false accounting and false statements by a promoter.

It’s very sad news. There is little doubt that Allan Hubbard is a compassionate, caring and modest man who has done a lot of good for many people.

But as I said to someone the other day, good people can do bad things. It doesn’t make them a bad person, just flawed (as we all are to varying degrees). The Serious Fraud Office has obviously concluded that Allan Hubbard broke the law, and that the offences were serious enough to warrant charges. The fact Hubbard is a nice well intentioned man is a factor in sentencing (if found guilty) rather than guilt.