Companies Budget Loans Limited and Evolution Finance, owned by Allan Hawkins and his son Wayne, have been fined $700,000 for what a judge called cynical and deliberate offending. Their companies Budget Loans Limited and Evolution Finance were convicted of 125 charges under the Fair Trading Act. Allan Hawkins was one of New Zealand's richest men in the 1980s until his company Equiticorp collapsed in 1989 owing hundreds of millions of dollars to investors. Two years later he was sentenced to six years jail for fraud. Yesterday's case was taken by the Commerce Commission - its general counsel, Mary-Anne Borrowdale, speaks to Philippa Tolley.
31 May 2018
