Three former directors of the failed finance company Bridgecorp have been found guilty of criminal charges.
Rod Petricevic, Rob Roest and Peter Steigrad have been on trial in the High Court in Auckland, following the collapse of the company in 2007 owing more than $450 million.
Petricevic, the former managing director, and Roest, the former financial controller, have been convicted on 18 charges of misleading investors and making untrue statements in prospectuses and other offer documents.
The charges were laid under the Crimes Act, Companies Act and Securities Act.
The judge said both men had given false undertakings that interest payments had never been missed.
He said he rejected a defence that the men held an honest view that the statements to investors were true.
Steigrad, who was a non-executive director, was convicted on six charges but was found not guilty of four.
Justice Venning said he accepted that Steigrad held a reasonable belief that some of the false statements made by Bridgecorp were true.
Petricevic and Roest were remanded in custody and will be sentenced in the next two months.
Steigrad was given bail.
Crown seeks jail terms
The Crown says it will be asking for substantial jail terms for the former bosses of Bridgecorp.
Crown Prosecutor Brian Dickey says the Crown will be asking the judge to give Rod Petricevic and Rob Roest longer jail terms than those handed to other finance company leaders to date.
Mr Dickey says he will seek terms of imprisonment of at least four years for the pair, but possibly more.
Shareholders Association
The Shareholders Association says the Bridgecorp directors deserve longer jail terms than other white collar criminals because of the way they wilfully deceived investors.
Shareholders Association chair John Hawkins says the directors knew they were lying, which makes their actions worse than those of other finance company leaders, who just acted ineptly.
Mr Hawkins says making matters worse is the fact the Bridgecorp leaders lied to investors about the dire state of the company's finances for at least five months.
Comment
Bridgecorp investor Maurice Jeffries says the company's trustees should also have been charged along with the directors.
Mr Jeffries lost $26,000 in the collapse.
He says the Financial Markets Authority is looking to charge trustees in other similar cases and it should be the same with Bridgecorp.
He says the trustees were supposed to keep the company in check, but they seemed to do nothing except take their fees.
