NZ Law Society's Panic Attack - by Tristam Price

Caroline Sawyer is a UK-born and educated lawyer who returned to Europe two years ago after an 11 year stint here in Aotearoa. She let her practising certificate with the New Zealand Law Society (NZLS) expire in mid-2021 but continues representing a few tribunal clients as an advocate.

One of her clients, Ana Shaw, has been pursued by the former Bay of Plenty District Health Board (BOP DHB) which seeks a finding of contempt of the Employment Relations Authority (ERA), a penalty and legal costs. This is a novel case in the nature of a private prosecution without any actual charges, on which we've reported extensively.

Shaw's former advocate Allan Halse is a co-defendant in these proceedings, which Halse claims are bogus and a constitute "egregious expenditure" of public money. The proceedings were started by BOP DHB in December 2018.

Caroline Sawyer's appearance from late-2019 as the legal representative of Allan Halse and Ana Shaw followed her resignation in 2015 from the role of lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) citing its refusal to correct false records created about her by her managers. Like a lot of skilled migrants, she was told to “go back”, but instead she brought constructive dismissal proceedings.

As her claim started to take shape, evidence of more fakes – especially a faked email relationship with a manager (ie: the sending of emails from her office while she was outside of it) - emerged. It appeared that fake email relationship threatened to reveal some of the managers’ embarrassing secrets, among other things.

NZLS got involved when Sawyer reported the managers, also lawyers, to it for using false documents and obtaining money by deception – falsifying records, then having their employer pay lawyers to defend them.

They didn’t deny it but instead they got the university’s lawyers to assert to both NZLS and the ERA that MBIE (of which the ERA is a part) had signed off on a “Record of Settlement” agreement.

Despite assertions that Sawyer was paid “tens of thousands of dollars” to keep quiet about the fakes and that the contract had to be “respected”, Sawyer was never paid anything. I first got in touch with Sawyer when that became clear from published ERA and court papers. Someone dodged a bullet there.

In 2018 I sent Sawyer a newspaper report about Allan Halse being “fined” by the ERA and the following year she ended up representing him, his client Ana Shaw, and others. Her review-based approach to the BOP DHB case has so far prevented a finding of contempt, but the proceedings we’ve been calling a zombie SLAPP since May 2021 are still not resolved. As a relative newcomer to employment law with a fresh perspective, these cases gave Sawyer in-depth knowledge of a legal mechanism that enables money laundering. This method utilised MBIE's free mediation service, where illegal contracts can be "certified", and then repeated as orders in the ERA and even the courts (a phenomenon almost unique to New Zealand). I have seen correspondence where the overseas authorities have acknowledged the involvement of New Zealand lawyers in money laundering, which must be damaging for all of us. Sawyer has said that the BOP DHB case is supposed to be a precedent for the next step in that mechanism.

When she realised the Law Society was actually supporting the mechanism, Sawyer resigned from the New Zealand Bar as per the attached email to the then President of the Law Society.

During 2022, rogue elements within the legal industry were secretly cooking something up, which we found out about via a NZ Herald article on 11 October (and commented on the following day).

I have spoken to Herald reporter Jeremy Wilkinson and then had a brief email exchange with NZLS Prosecutions Manager Natalie Town, who informed me its Disciplinary Tribunal has jurisdiction to hear charges against any current or former practitioner under s 241, LCA 2006.

But why would they attack Sawyer when she has already voluntarily deregistered, has nothing to do with them anymore, has not been in the country for two years and only advocates for a couple of remaining clients here?

Probably because, in the normal course of her work, she dared to expose an effective (and to some, valuable) method of money laundering.

It works by way of a highly confidential contract (Section 149), typically used to end an employment relationship without exposing the employer to a personal grievance claim.

Sawyer has explained how these were developed as a way to validate and enforce illegal arrangements. That hasn’t been denied either. She says the lawyers that set it up could only have hoped to keep it secret if it was intended for consensual transactions, like money laundering. Otherwise someone would contest it and expose the whole method, as has happened now that it’s been used for embezzlement and general workplace bullying claims.

We have no idea how many individuals have been inconvenienced by this, and what their reputational exposure is. This article Sawyer wrote for the Oxford Business Review before removing herself from the NZLS Bar probably ruffled some feathers:

Oxford Business Review - Funny business and getaway drivers

Back in the days when Sawyer cared about whether or not New Zealand developed into a money laundering hub (via Section 149 contract), some quite direct references to the use of money laundering mechanisms were asserted on behalf of clients, which so far only Associate Judge Johnston seemed to accept in this 2020 insolvency matter involving a business relationship between David Henderson and Rodney Hide.

And speaking of money laundering hubs, details are emerging of a crisis in New South Wales where both of the main political parties are reliant on donations from the gaming industry which is ostensibly regulated by peak body ClubsNSW. Its head of anti-money laundering compliance Troy Stolz resigned in late 2019 claiming that senior management were obstructing AML/CTF compliance. ClubsNSW are suing Stolz for giving a damning report on noncompliance to media and a Member of the Australian House of Representatives. Attempts to keep this private prosecution secret by way of suppression order created a Streisand Effect that has now exposed ClubsNSW senior management to a bleak future.

Whatever NZLS thought it had planned for Caroline Sawyer, all of the arguments reportedly raised in the Herald article have already been discredited, in advance, over the last three years by Leighton Associates. And every time Sawyer and her clients are attacked publicly, it leads to a risk of further exposure for anyone involved in money laundering – perpetrators, enablers and bystanders (including lawyers and former lawyers).

This is an interesting development in a matter that we thought NZLS and VUW had been trying to live down.

Desperation across the ditch - Independent NSW politician discusses money laundering scourge