SFO<\/a> director Karen Chang said.<\/p>\n\u201c[Thursday\u2019s] sentence and the imposition of a minimum period of imprisonment reflects the seriousness of such offending, which undermines legitimate investment markets and threatens New Zealand\u2019s reputation as a safe place to do business.\u201d<\/p>\n
East Wind Company Ltd was part of the East Wind Group, which marketed itself as offering financial services and immigration support to New Zealand\u2019s Japanese community. <\/p>\n
Hanyu was the manager of the company\u2019s finance department from 2004 to December 2017.<\/p>\n
She worked with Ashikaga to obtain funds from investors, making false statements about investment products and promised returns. <\/p>\n
They exploited their connections to the Japanese community and ran fictitious investment schemes that deceived investors of more than $20 million.<\/p>\n
In reality, financial products offered by the company \u2013 the Group Term Deposit and Waterloo Fund \u2013 operated as Ponzi schemes. Incoming funds were used to make repayments to other investors.<\/p>\n
Chang said Hanyu also stole more than $800,000 from East Wind, which she transferred to her mortgage account and personal credit card.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur investigators and forensic accountants analysed tens of thousands of documents to unravel the complicated East Wind scheme. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis included large amounts of detailed financial records, most of which were in Japanese,\u201d Chang said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of the investors in this case were based overseas. Foreign investors are important to the New Zealand economy, and investors must have confidence our markets are fair, safe and well-regulated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SFO will continue to prioritise cases which pose a threat to our country\u2019s commercial wellbeing, which is particularly critical in today\u2019s challenging economic environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
East Wind companies owed more than $43m<\/p>\n
In their final report, liquidators Stephanie Jeffreys and Malcom Moore of Grant Thornton said six East Wind companies owed a total of $43.3m to 171 creditors.<\/p>\n
Two of the smaller entities, owing 10 creditors less than $20,000, paid out between 69 and 83 cents in the dollar.<\/p>\n
But it was bad news for the vast majority of creditors who accounted for more than 99% of the outstanding total, the report said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are insufficient funds to distribute to unsecured creditors of any of the other companies.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Ponzi scheme is a fraud in which earlier investors are paid with money contributed by newer investors, rather than from legitimate returns. <\/p>\n
It is named after Charles Ponzi, who ran an early such scheme in the United States in the 1920s.<\/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
Join the NZ Herald\u2019s Open Justice team for Case by Case<\/a>, a video and podcast series examining the disputes and decisions making headlines across New Zealand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Suspicions from his clients as to what had happened to their money led some to attend the funeral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1558,9218,138,100656,3806,246,196973,2082,2740,196961,24176,321,14641,93,130,37107,111,139,69,1118,114111,3170,4739,131,1361,10000,1530,196960],"class_list":["post-611634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-been","tag-before","tag-business","tag-collapsing","tag-east","tag-finance","tag-fleeced","tag-for","tag-former","tag-hanyu","tag-hundreds","tag-investors","tag-jailed","tag-manager","tag-more","tag-multimilliondollar","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-ponzi","tag-scheme","tag-six","tag-than","tag-that","tag-wind","tag-years","tag-yuko"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611634","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=611634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}