This is Joanna Holden. She has quite a record.
Now the Attorney-General has applied to intervene in a case where she is a judge in the Employment Court. Usually the employment tribunals interest Leighton Associates when they make coverup orders to help criminals get away with their crimes. In this case, Member Marija Urlich has started to make orders exposing material suppressed by the District Court. That would consolidate more of MBIE's control over the judiciary.
Why would the Attorney-General intervene?
The Attorney-General is the head of the legal system and also an MP. His responsibility is to maintain the rule of law. You'd expect an Attorney-General to have worries about the employment tribunals making up rules and their support for crime and coverups. You'd expect him to be worried about criminal coverups spreading into the District Court and the High Court, but this Attorney-General (and the one before) actually organised that.
Joanna Holden is a leader in making corruption legal. Her notoriety began before she got her employment judge position, with the Peter Whittall affair.
Leighton Associates readers will remember the Pike River miners. 29 were killed in an explosion in November 2010 caused by long-term breaches of health and safety rules. The only director of the company who was interviewed about it was the newly-appointed Chief Executive, Peter Whittall. He was prosecuted by the Department of Labour and WorkSafe, but the prosecution was dropped after a deal arranged between lawyers in return for money. The deal was that the Crown would drop the prosecution in return for Whittall obtaining $3,410,000 for the miners' families from his directors' liability insurance. That meant MBIE wouldn't even have to compensate the families. From the insurance point of view, that's quite a Serious Fraud.
The miners' families fought the deal through the courts. MBIE and Crown Law defended it. Crown Law has been the most powerful supporter of coverup deals and the "culture of impunity". Joanna Holden advised MBIE for Crown Law.
Just before the Supreme Court trounced Holden's conduct on the Peter Whittall coverup, she was appointed as a judge of the Employment Court.
Holden was welcomed in by Chief Judge Christina Inglis, who celebrated the open war on New Zealand's legal system. She didn't hesitate to talk about the Employment Court's "inherent and implied powers to punish for contempt" and how they were able to defeat justice using "non-publication orders" - advertising coverup services for their favoured criminals.
Judges Inglis and Corkill had already bankrupted whistleblower Geoffrey Brown and were on their way to sending him to prison so they could help cover up corruption in Tauranga City Council. Holden was ideal to expand their mob rules.
The current Attorney-General is David Parker. On his watch, a fake academic and fake lawyer who had advised Crown Law, Tony Smith, drafted a new law so criminals really could get whistleblowers sent to prison legally. David Parker also appointed Kathryn Beck to be an Employment Court judge. As President of the Law Society she obtained orders to enforce coverups to protect a lawyer accused of rape. He appointed Anna Fitzgibbon to be a judge of the District Court. She had made news all round the world by saying sexual assault was something employers were entitled to do. She had also ordered payments to Tony Smith and Gordon Stewart to "compensate" them because their forgery and theft at Victoria University had been exposed.
These are matters of public record. When honest people protested, David Parker as Attorney-General said he had every confidence in his new judges. He could hardly not have known what he was doing.
On this Attorney-General's watch, Judge Holden joined forces with Anthony Drake to attack Allan Halse, an advocate. In 2018 Anthony Drake obtained Employment Relations Authority orders from James Crichton "fining" Allan Halse $30,000 and awarding damages of $3,000 and costs of $10,000. Not just Halse, and his company, but a contractor he had engaged to support a client. Drake did that to multiply the sums he wanted. It was all illegal but the Attorney-General let it happen.
Anthony Drake and Joanna Holden don't like honest people. And they like destroying them. Allan Halse asked the Employment Court to rehear the order Drake got from Crichton. Judge Holden didn't do that for a couple of years.
Anthony Drake went to the High Court in May 2020 to use Crichton's order to bankrupt Allan Halse. Judge Holden made an order in November 2020 in which she said the Crichton order would "continue". The law that Parliament made says different. It says that an Employment Court order means an Authority order is "set aside". Judge Holden showed her contempt for that by overruling it to help Anthony Drake with his attacks. By then, with Tony Smith's new law, the employment tribunals were in charge of defining contempt for the law. Their idea was that they made the law, and they made it for their own people.
Judge Holden also joined forces with the notorious firm of Buddle Findlay to attack one of Allan Halse's clients.
Hamish Kynaston of Buddle Findlay got a gag order against the client from Authority Member Trish McKinnon. Allan Halse took it to the Employment Court to be reheard, and it was allocated to Judge Holden.
When lawyers are corrupted, they use a lot of smoke and mirrors so we won't explain Holden and Kynaston's system here. Leighton Associates have seen court papers where Judge Holden was reported as "sniggering" with Kynaston while she confirmed the gag order. All that we need to say here is what Judge Holden did, and she did it publicly anyway. The Attorney-General let it happen.
Some of the cases were taken to the Court of Appeal, but the Court of Appeal judges supported the corrupt lawyers and judges. Of course they did. If the Attorney-General doesn't mind corruption in the judiciary, corrupt judges have the green light from the very top. And maybe they needed to cover up for their mate or themselves.
The Attorney-General is supposed to make sure the rule of law operates, but what they have done so far is make sure it doesn't.
There is a reason for that. It's the economy and private profit.
If crime can be legalised, lawyers can make a lot of money. That means money coming into New Zealand. It means drinks parties and rich people being able to do what they like.
To legalise crime, you need corrupt judges who don't mind putting themselves and their mates above the law, and you need MPs who will vote for it. Then you can say it's legal.
The New Zealand economy depends on financial services, including turning a blind eye to certain "investment services" which are another name for money laundering. New Zealand attracts honest investors, who don't look behind the publicity about how clean the country is, and dishonest investors, who can clean up their money by passing it though the "laundromat" of New Zealand. That's where the money comes from for those parties, and for the coverups of sex crimes.
Money laundering had to be made to look illegal in a way, or New Zealand would lose both sources of income. But it had to keep being possible, or New Zealand would lose both sources of income.
Money laundering was made illegal by MPs passing a law against it. But it wasn't brought into force, so lawyers could keep doing it.
Then it had to be brought into force, so lawyers would have to report "suspicious transactions". The solution was easy, provided you had enough corrupt judges and MPs. Just get them to make a user-friendly system for getting orders that legalise laundering.
What could be less "suspicious" than a court order?
The problem wth that is when the rest of the world realises your judges are corrupt, the whole system will crash.
The Attorney-General's job is to make sure that doesn't happen.
The last two Attorney-Generals have put corrupt judges in so many different courts, and got Parliament to legislate for the machinery of corruption, that MPs have lost control. That includes the Attorney-General.
Do Leighton Associates hope the Attorney-General is trying to control the corruption? Of course. We have to hope there is hope for our country.
Do Leighton Associates think the Attorney-General wants to try to control the corruption? Not really. He would hardly have put it in place if he did.
Do Leighton Associates think the Attorney-General could control the corruption if he wanted to? Not really. It would be easy to get Parliament to repeal the powers it gave them in the Contempt of Court Act 2019, but it wouldn't be easy to remove the corrupt judges. There are too many of them.
Leighton Associates do not currently see any leadership in New Zealand that wants to take control back from the sex offenders and the drug gangs. The judges have supported them so long they can't turn back now. The Prime Minister has just publicly shared drug money with the Mongrel Mob. New Zealand needs the corruption to continue because it's how money is made.
Leighton Associates are interested to see what Holden and Parker are going to do now.