High Court<\/a>. <\/p>\nWalker said that the judge erred in imposing the reparation order, failing to have due regard to Rajah\u2019s financial position.<\/p>\n
Sentencing submissions included the information that Rajah still had $100,000 of debt and was concerned he would be bankrupted.<\/p>\n
High Court Justice Pheroze Jagose said the Sentencing Act required the judge to impose a reparation sentence unless it would impose \u201cundue hardship\u201d on the offender. <\/p>\n
He said there was nothing in the judge\u2019s sentencing notes to suggest she carried out the necessary evaluation and, to that extent, she was in error.<\/p>\n
Only asset is KiwiSaver account<\/p>\n
A statement of Rajah\u2019s financial situation showed his only asset was less than $100,000 in his KiwiSaver account.<\/p>\n
During 2025, he had outstanding loans and overdrafts of about $100,000, plus another $16,000 of unsubstantiated debt. <\/p>\n
Lenders had indicated they would try to recover the money he owed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am satisfied Mr Rajah has no means to pay the victim\u2019s loss,\u201d Justice Jagose said in a recent decision. <\/p>\n
\u201cI also recognise at least his substantiated debts, and the fact of recovery action having been initiated, suggest he is likely to be adjudicated bankrupt in time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reparation can be imposed as a way of compensating victims, which is less expensive than having them bring separate court action for the recovery of their losses. <\/p>\n
In this case, Rajah was unable to make good on his offer to make amends, the judge said.<\/p>\n
Justice Jagose said that it was inappropriate to impose a sentence of reparation, and to do so would make the sentence \u201cmanifestly excessive\u201d.<\/p>\n
![\"Justice]()
Justice Pheroze Jagose allowed the appeal against the $419,971 reparation order. Photo \/ Doug Sherring<\/p>\n
\u201cIt [reparation] is not an effective sentencing response in those circumstances, giving the victim speedy and inexpensive relief.\u201d<\/p>\n
He allowed the appeal and substituted a sentence omitting reparation. <\/p>\n
The appeal was brought only against the reparation part of the sentence, and the 31-month jail term still stands.<\/p>\n
Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of frontline experience as a probation officer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The money – totalling $419,971 – went into bank accounts belonging to Rajah. He said he had taken…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[146538,11306,51,1863,305,692,14641,111,139,69,2744,146537,213,1346,146536,61,14443],"class_list":["post-252737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-146538","tag-accountant","tag-auckland","tag-back","tag-have","tag-he","tag-jailed","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pay","tag-rajah","tag-sports","tag-stole","tag-thirusivan","tag-to","tag-wont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}