BlomDumps, Act I – The Genesis of a defamation scam

New Zealand’s authorities may soon be calling time on Matthew Blomfield, despite his very tricky, rickety and under-funded defamation tort which is soon to enter unchartered waters, arguably the most dangerous phase.

A week ago today New Zealand’s High Court ruled that Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater should be considered a journalist, as in what he actually did for a living, and continues to do, fitted rather well with the job description of any other MSM hack and so Slater, much to the chagrin of those who despise him, slipped effortlessly into history, oh and section 68 of New Zealand’s Evidence Act; no surprises there really, any judge who found otherwise would have been a laughingstock amongst the international community of jurists, not that the threat of ridicule has concerned some of the complete idiots liberally peppered amongst New Zealand’s judiciary .

Slater did however fail, also unsurprisingly, to provide enough evidence and or the compelling argument required, at least sufficient to convince Justice Raynor Asher that his sources also deserved the protections the law normally affords informants who descretely hand over brown envelopes in underground carparks.

LF however disagreed with Asher’s ruling, specifically on the issue of Slater’s application under section 68 (1) of New Zealand Evidence Act, because Asher’s reasoning did not in large part accurately reflect the facts of the case.

Nevertheless from LF’s perspective the primary battle has indeed now been won, that being that bloggers, with a few common sense limits, are to be considered the same as an everyday garden variety MSM journo, and as such also have the right to the protection of their sources.

Slater is now confronted with two choices moving on. The first is obvious enough, whether to appeal Asher, although should he decide in favour of that option Slater will have to do the academic hard-yards before he attempts to seek leave. LF suspects that this may in fact be a task well beyond Slater’s personal ability, that he may need to call on some of his allegedly well-heeled National party mates to lend a hand and engage suitably qualified counsel should he decide to go down that route – the Court of Appeal is a very different animal by comparison with the High Court.

Slater’s second option is to simply to get on with it, to defend Blomfield’s defamation tort. LF suspects that Asher’s higgledy-piggledy half-arsed decision was likely premised on this being the route Slater would in all probability adopt, no doubt Asher suspecting, as do we, that Slater did not have the required financial resources to squander on stuck-up Ponce’s with a penchant for horsehair wigs; however having said that, neither does Blomfield, unless of course he manages to find another “mark” sometime soon.

What amazes us here at LF is that Blomfield has lied, cheated and conned his way through this case with out so much as a reprimand. His behind the scenes duplicity has been evident at every turn, a degree of skullduggery which over time has demonstrated a clear pattern, that being the mans proclivity for resorting to intimidation, lies, smear and manipulation, basically what ever it takes.

LF has spoken with many of Slater’s sources over the past ten months give or take, all have had genuine grievances with Blomfield and perhaps more importantly all have had unsatisfactory results from the statutory authorities that have repeatedly failed to curtail Blomfield’s behaviour. Most of these people have over time joined forces, forming something akin to a Matthew Blomfield fan club. This collective expression of dissatisfaction and frustration is not the sort of behaviour that one would normally find associated with the one-off feud theory postulated by Justice Asher. Asher in his judgement of course found that this case had the whiff of a vendetta, the judges belief clearly based on the erroneous premise that one man, Marc Spring, or possibly three, throwing in the names of Hell Pizza founder Warren Powell and a woman into the mix for good measure, concluding that it had likely all came about because Spring, possibly in conjunction with the other two, had been caught out in a failed business deal with Blomfield.

We are not quite sure how it was that Asher arrived at his conclusion, we’re also not certain whether Kiwi judges are subject to random drugs testing, nevertheless he did what he did and it only remains now for Justice Asher’s conclusions (an extraordinarily unsound hypothesis) to be debunked. The fact that Slater did in fact have many sources is on the evidence, LF have seen and experienced, irrefutable, with each of the informants having their own good reasons for wanting the truth to prevail, whilst remaining anonymous fearing reprisal, which will likely prove extremely embarrassing for Justice Asher in the end. Of course Asher had also taken the even stranger view that “reprisals” are only ever meted out by criminals beating the crap out of their victims.

When Fairfax New Zealand’s Sunday Star Times agreed last May to collaborate with Lauda Finem in doing an investigative piece on the wider story, LF having recieved from the journo a written agreement protecting our sources, we gave the journalist responsible a fairly sizable pile of information including of course a list of names.

Some on that list agreed to speak with the journalist and others didn’t, often citing many of the same reasons they’d given Slater. In the end however the journalist was able to interrogate a sizeable number of the group named in his list, all people who had been victims of Blomfields peculiar method of conducting business. In fact the journo later reported to LF that he’d heard many more stories than he could ever have hoped to do justice to in what he had initially thought would be a significant 3000 word feature, 3000 words that were later cut down to 1800 when the new editor, ex Herald on Sunday assistant editor Jonathan Milne, commenced his new job as editor of the Sunday Star Times.

Prior to the story being completely dumped by Milne the journo had settled on six people, some of whom had been sources that Slater too had also relied on. All six were, in the journos own words “completely upfront”, with two even agreeing to be photographed, at the time cognicent of the fact that the photograph was to appear on the front page of the newspaper, along with the proposed article. None of the people were named by Asher in his written decision.

Simply put, as far as we here at LF can see there were, and are, many more people out there who are now willing to stand up to Blomfield in defense of Slater if need be. Whilst it probably does not help Cameron Slater the list of sources LF is now working with has grown exponentially in the past two months.

But as we have said many times before, those significant others who had been Slater’s sources have all been, somewhat strangely of little or no interest to Blomfield. In fact Justice Asher could have been forgiven for believing that the three people Blomfield had named were the only informants that existed. This was of course what Blomfield had clearly wanted the court to believe, after all, it has been Blomfield who set about very publicly promoting that particular myth to his adoring fans, especially those who work for the mainstream media outlets.

What Blomfield has perhaps not anticipated is that more people are comming forward, just recently two rogue players have entered the fray, having quietly slipped in the back door, they too wish to remain anonymous. Of course it’s a wish that can and will be respected simply because LF, unlike Cameron Slater, is beyond the jurisdiction of New Zealand’s shonky and unreliable judicial system.

The new informants had not thought it worthwhile speaking to Slater in 2012 so it should be emphasised that these new sources are LF’s alone and have had nothing whatsoever to do with Slater or the other sources that Slater has now been ordered to name. However what these two informants have brought to the table has everything to do with Slater, more especially when it comes to lending credibility to the allegations Slater levelled against Blomfield in 2012.

In our last story we spoke briefly of one anonymous source who was exceptionally keen to get a large cache of files to us. Importantly these file were not the same as those that blogger Cameron Slater had received in 2012, which are now the subject of the legal dispute. At the time the informant first came forward team LF were given a vague idea of what this information consisted of, vague as in we were told little more than the info was Blomfield related and likely incriminating. In order to further protect the source LF ensured that no one actually met in person, that the information was passed in a way that completely protected this individuals right to anonymity.

Since then we have had a number other people come forward each wanting to tell their own personal stories of business dealings and relationships gone terribly wrong. The share volume of people who have complained clearly then discredits Justice Asher’s belief that Blomfield, in the case of Slater’s reporting, had been the victim of a “feud”, with Mr Marc Spring having been primarilly responsible, and the additional possibility that Warren Powell of Hell Pizza fame and a mysterious woman, had supported Mr Spring in this “vendetta”, or as Asher might have preferred to phrase it, an “extreme and vindictive” campaign that had all “the hallmarks of a private feud”

Incidentally Asher’s judgement indicates that he had clearly formed the view, again somewhat strangely, that Slater had published material that was not in the public interest. A very strange conclusion indeed given the facts but understandable given that the good judge had obviously concluded that Slater’s blog posts had been the work of a solitary antagonist, again possibly supported by the two aforementioned individuals that Blomfield had been soley responsible for naming in the first place.

LF has not been privy to all of the documents Blomfield filed with the court at the time, however there is one thing that we are certain of, it was Blomfield who had identified these three people, not Slater. Slater had of course responded truthfully, as he was legally obliged to. But Slater was in a catch 22 situation, to have filed affidavits in response, denying their involvement in order to protect them as sources, would of course have been tantamount to perjury. The question now has to be asked why was Blomfield aware that these three individuals had likely been among Slater’s sources. The answer is simple really, Blomfield knew that he had seriously fucked over these people, so it comes as no surprise then that he was able to identify them. But what about the others? Well he likely knows who they are too, having also screwed his creditors during bankruptcy and various others that he has financially wiped out over the past seven years.

The answer, having regard to the facts that are now in LF’s possession, is that Blomfield knew that at least two of the informants had ongoing issues with his continuing criminal behaviour, which it could perhaps be argued was to some degree personal, but falling well short of Asher’s proposed vendetta or “feud”.

Importantly however, neither men’s business issues would have been interrelated had it not been for the actions of Blomfield himself. The only thing these men had in common was in reality Blomfield, he had brought them both together, and of course a similar pattern of Blomfields criminal behaviour that continued to see both suffer serious ongoing financial and personal losses. In fact the only thing that any of Slater’s many sources had in common with each other was in effect Matthew Blomfield, they might otherwise have never met had it not been for the groups common desire to see Blomfield brought to heel and legally held to account.

The important thing that justice Asher has failed to grasp was that this “common” interest was far from the somewhat limited “private feud” Asher seemed at pains to paint in his judgement. In fact based on the information LF received prior to Asher’s questionable conclusions LF believes that Slater’s informants, whilst themselves having fallen victim to Blomfield’s rorts, were far more concerned that if Blomfield was not stopped there would be a growing list of victims.

This was of course a completely valid concern, in fact it still is. It seems also to have been a concern shared by the New Zealand  Department of Economic Development, who having banned Blomfield as a director twice, eventually had no alternative but to grant Blomfield a special exemption, against their better judgement.

The parcel LF received from  our recent informant contained a vast amount of information in various forms – emails, company details, bank statements, invoices, legal contracts of various types and of course good old-fashioned letters. Approximately 55’000 items all up, all of them dating from the period 2009 to mid 2014.

Whilst Cameron Slater also allegedly received thousands of emails, among other documents, on a hard drive back in 2012, which Slater then handed to the Official Assignee and the Serious Fraud Office, the result was not what he or his informants had expected – for the most part what appeared to be a complete disinterest on the part of the SFO.

Recent revelations contained in Nicky Hager’s Book, Dirty Politics, relating to Slater’s alleged relationship with embattled Hanover Finance merchant banker Mark Hotchin and an alleged campaign against the SFO’s Adam Feeley which was also underway in 2011 – 2012 could well explain the disinterest in anything to do with Slater.

The SFO may also have simply seen the complaint as retaliatory, the possibility that the SFO may have adopted this view, unbeknownst to Slater and his informants, will become more obvious later in this piece, as the potential reasons unfold.

The Official Assignee at the time, Anthony Pullan, did however eventually act, pulling Blomfield’s special exemption, a decision that was based on the strength of the evidence on the Hard Drive that Slater had supplied, of course Blomfield later threatened legal action and they were ultimately forced to back down – not quite enough evidence.

Both of Slater’s actions in reporting and passing on the material he had been given, to these two authorities, was certainly in the public interest. Unfortunately it proved to be less than required or perhaps for less clear reasons conveniently forgotten.

On this occasion however LF has done exactly the same as Cameron Slater, given the nature of the recently acquired new documents and what we suspect they evidence we started forwarding material that team LF has reviewed on to the appropriate statutory authorities in New Zealand.

Interestingly fellow blog, “The Standard”, sunk to a new low with their last story on the Blomfield v Slater saga. The article’s heading says it all really “Popcorn time: how craven is Slater?”. Lynn Prentice, the author of the piece has clearly lost all reason and objectivity, and his memory it seems.

Mr Prentice and Mattthew Blomfield also had a little chuckle at the expense of Cameron Slater in the comments that followed the article. Prentice appears to have enjoyed a spot of defamation himself, a fact that LF believes has not gone unnoticed by legal associates of the “dodgy brothers”, LF suspect that Mr Prentice may be about to have the smile wiped off his dial, but that’s for more than competent others to deal with:

Prentice’s failure to tackle either the facts and legal issues with any accuracy and separate fact from of his transparently obvious personal feelings, due to a one-eyed hatred of Slater, is deplorable. So we here at Lauda Finem have decided to put the Blomfield v Slater case on the back burner for a while and focus on something far more important.

From LF’s perspective, whether Lynn Prentice can see it with his one good eye or not, the issue of Slater’s status as a journalist, being the core issue, has been well and truly decided.

The substantive defamation case will be no doubt be decided on the merit of the evidence alone and that’s the material that LF, just like Cameron Slater, feel that the New Zealand public really have a right to know about, albeit that Justice Raynor Asher may have had a slightly different view to ours.

With that in mind we will now start bringing our readers the very complicated and somewhat convoluted story that lies beneath the defamation case. In the process we will be naming the individuals and the corrupt law firms that have enabled Blomfield over the past seven or so years to get away with some pretty serious criminal offending. We also intend providing readers with an important selection of extracts from the large cache of documents that LF now holds, documents that on the face of it evidence serious criminal offending and various conspiracies on the part of Blomfield and his enablers, many of them Kiwi lawyers.

In addition to his gaggle of bent lawyers Matthew Blomfield has more recently dragged at least one well known New Zealander into the scrap with Cameron Slater, albeit without the public knowing. LF, as will most New Zealander’s, know this person. We suspect that had they known the truth of what has actually transpired behind the scenes in the Blomfield camp over several years, they would very likely have immediately distanced themselves and politely declined to get involved in a case that has undoubtedly been designed by Blomfield purely as an attack dog.

The unwitting person that Blomfield had somehow managed to inveigle LF in fact has considerable respect for and so we though long and hard before taking the decision to name him and present the evidence that proves his involvement. Whilst it is regrettable that he has been dragged into the case it is nevertheless essential that the entire story be told, without omitting or censoring any of the relevant facts.

 

Justice Campaigner, Joe Karam

 

When one thinks of Joe Karam it is almost always in the context of a David and Goliath story. As aforesaid LF holds Mr Karam in very high regard, quite simply because he is a stayer and stood by David Bain for well over two decades when others either stood by and watched or themselves engaged in throwing stones. What LF can not however get a handle on is why Joe Karam would have allowed himself to become ensnared by Matthew Blomfield.

It would be quite obvious to the informed reader why Blomfield would have selected Mr Karam however, Karam having just been successful with his defamation case against Kent Parker and Vic Purkiss, the two men responsible for establishing the now infamous web forum “Justice For Robin Bain”.

Blomfield would also undoubtedly have recognised the currency in using Karam’s good name, if only to lend credibility to his own very shaky defamation tort against Slater. Knowing Joe Karam however LF suspects that Karam would have warned Blomfield against using his name, that however would, we suspect, not have stopped Blomfield discretely using the connection without Karam’s knowledge, with the likes of his friends, associates and journalists, to add a much needed touch credibility to his spurious claim against Slater.

So how is it that LF know’s that Blomfield “used” Joe Karam? As we hinted at in our last post LF have obtained a large cache of documents, among them emails that were exchanged between Karam and Blomfield in November last year, wherein Karam appears to have offered Blomfield help with the preparation of his case against Slater. Given, however what LF is about to expose it is indeed unfortunate, perhaps even regrettable, that Mr Karam allowed himself to become involved without thoroughly vetting Mr Blomfield and his very colourful past beforehand.

We are not certain how the pair came to be introduced so we can only conclude that the bald-as-brass Matthew Blomfield saw an opportunity and likely approached Karam first. The connection between the pair also suggests that it was through Karam senior that Blomfield was then introduced to Karam junior who subsequently represented Blomfield during Slater’s High Court appeal. Whilst LF has quite a bit of information surrounding this relationship we propose to publish only one of the emails, to evidence the existence of that relationship:

Note: Click hyperlinks below to view documents Blomfield attached in his email to Karam;

Statement of Claim 08_10_2012.pdf

Schedule for Statement of Claim 08_10_2012.pdf

2012112114323239557.pdf

Given that Justice Asher spoke to what he believed may have been a vendetta against Blomfield, team LF have thought it appropriate that we now start to “unpack” this case in its entirety, beginning with a little of the history behind the legal argument, why it may have been that Matthew Blomfield suspected Hell Pizza co-founder Warren Powell of being one of Slater’s sources, the prime mover and shaker in fact if one was to believe Blomfield, further convincing himself and anyone that would listen that Powell had paid Cameron Slater for his so-called “attack”. Of course this recent theory of Blomfield’s has been all to convenient especially given that it just happens to fit nicely with allegations that Nicky Hager has made in his book Nasty Politics, it’s certainly a theory that the aforementioned Lynn Prentice appears to have swallowed hook line and sinker.

LF can advise our readers however that Blomfield’s latest accusations against Powell, in that he paid Slater, are wholly false; that LF hold’s irrefutable evidence that Powell did no such thing, a fact that the courts will also inevitably prove as fact in due course, no doubt much to Blomfield’s complete chagrin and of course his further humiliation.

So why has Blomfield allowed himself to be convinced that Powell was the main player behind Cameron Slater’s 2012 blog posts? The man that he needed to target if he was continue on his merry way. LF has detailed below just a handful of the reasons why Blomfield may have come to develop this particular pathological schema.

A case of whats good for the Goose?

 

Back in July 2011 APN’s weekly Kiwi tabloid the Herald on Sunday ran a piece penned by its journo Bevan Hurley. Hurley’s article purported to report on a raid against the well known company Hell Pizza, a company co-founded by Kiwi franchise guru Warren Powell and his partners Callum Davies and Stuart McMullin. The raid in question was conducted by New Zealand’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the very same policing agency that Cameron Slater would later report Blomfield’s activities to in 2012.

Lauda Finem has known for some time that Blomfield likely had Bevan Hurley and various other Kiwi journo’s in his pocket for some time. We had also been advised by many of our sources that they had always suspected that Blomfield had in fact been behind this particular SFO raid on the offices of Hell Pizza and the private homes of a number of that companies employees, Mr Powell included.

Whilst our informant’s stories were very compelling, and quite plausible, they had unfortunately not been able to provide any “hard” evidence of Blomfield’s involvement in the attempt to damage the company and it’s owners reputations.

Despite the SFO seizing all the companies records, computers belonging to the company and other items, including personal computers from the private residences that had also been raided the SFO investigation ultimately found no evidence whatsoever of any wrong doing.

LF however now has evidence that points squarely at Blomfield having been responsible, that he alone was the mastermind behind the SFO raid, the subsequent investigation and the newspaper articles penned at the time by his friend and collaborator Bevan Hurley.

Blomfield not only made the complaint, the evidence LF has obtained suggests that Blomfield made the complaint knowing it to have been wholly false. It would seem that for some reason Matthew Blomfield had set out to damage Hell Pizza, it’s owner Warren Powell and various other associated businesses by design and that in that process he had enlisted the support of his media contacts at both APN and Television New Zealand.

What is clear from some of the emails is that there was an element of malice on the part of the journos involved. In fact one employee at TVNZ, Jeremy Merwood, appears to have been feeding Blomfield information unlawfully, information that Blomfield had absolutely no entitlement to, emails containing commercially sensitive material that had been intended for Bevan Hurley’s eyes only. Emails that had been response’s to Hurleys questions around the false allegations Blomfield had manufactured in his SFO complaint.

It’s clear from this evidence that Blomfield was using his media contacts for his own purposes and that they were willing participants in a game of cat and mouse that Blomfield had undoubtedly started. In fact Blomfield’s relationship with the TVNZ employee has continued to this day with Blomfield presence seen in a whole raft of emails and other documents around 2013. In the documents Blomfield appears to be assisting Merwood with legal proceedings around his divorce, which he then invoiced Merwood for.

Not only had Blomfield made the false complaint to the SFO he continued to feed the SFO investigators information, including the home addresses of Hell Pizza office staff to facilitate a more rapid SFO raid. Blomfield had also been keeping Hurley up to date on when the SFO raid would actually take place, which corroborates our eye-witness accounts of Bevan Hurley’s presence at the various addresses on the day:

As the SFO investigation on Hell Pizza unfolded Blomfield was being feed information by the investigating officers which he then immediately passed on to Bevan Hurley to facilitate Hurley’s next attack piece on Powell and the company, articles that whilst appearing balanced were clearly designed to inflict maximum damage to the company and of course Warren Powell.

Before the SFO raid in June 2011 however it seems that Blomfield may have also made a false complaint to New Zealand’s tax office, the Inland Revenue Department (IRD), and that he had then again contacted Hurley with a view to having Hurley publish yet another story designed to again fuck Hell Pizza and of course Warren Powell.

The relationship between Hurley and Blomfield, looking at the emails, is sinister, there appears to be much more to it than just that of a source feeding a journo leads. Blomfield had been feeding Hurley Warren Powell’s private correspondence and its apparent from some of the emails that both Hurley and Blomfield were in fact deliberatley stalking Powell.

Additional evidence of this “stalking” behaviour is found in Blomfield’s pathological habits. Blomfield appears to have been obsessed with setting up “Google alerts” for the stories that he had fed Hurley , LF suspects that Blomfield was doing this so that he could keep an eye on his work, collecting and collating information on other media outlets (or Blogs) that had picked up on the stories the Herald on Sunday had published for him.

The Google alert above was setup just before a series of negative stories that Herald on Sunday published in January 2011. The evidence that LF has obtained unequivocally links Blomfield to all of the stories that Hurley wrote, stories that were then published in the Herald on Sunday:

What is clear from the material LF have obtained is that Blomfield was out to get Warren Powell and that he spent months during 2011 stalking Powell and feeding Bevan Hurley and APN material that was designed to damage the Hell Pizza brand. It’s also very clear from the emails that Hurley was not acting as most objective journalists would. Hurley’s relationship with Blomfield clearly has a very dangerous dimension, almost to the point that one would have to question his reasons? Did Blomfield have something on Hurley, information that could have been damaging if it ever became public? Given Hurley’s unconscionable behaviour it’s a valid question.

Again looking at the material we have obtained there is a clear pattern and it is LF’s opinion that Blomfield’s clandestine harassment and Hurleys complicit treatment of Powell using the Herald on Sunday is probably what caused Powell’s split with his Hell Pizza partners Callum Davies and Stuart McMullen. In fact Bevan Hurley also penned an article on the separation which was again, you guessed it, published in the Herald on Sunday:

This behaviour on the part of both Blomfield and Hurley explains a text that Blomfield sent Slater’s source and witness Mr Marc Spring at around the same time as Hurley was doing his bidding. Blomfield was obviously so confident in his relationship with Hurley and his ability to have the so-called journalist publish whatever he desired, the arrogant little cunt was stupid enough to put it in writing just four days after one of bum-boy Hurley’s articles, announcing Powell’s departure from Hell Pizza and New Zealand:

 

Of course it was a departure that Hurley crowed about, but one that he could predict effortlessly simply because his little buddy and co-conspirator Matthew Blomfield had, from behind the scenes, engineered the whole thing using information he likely unlawfully obtained.

Despite Powell having left New Zealand, again looking at the documents, Blomfield was not about to slow up on the attack on Powell and Hell Pizza. Whilst LF are still working on the likely reasons behind the Blomfield’s clandestine hate campaign, managing to conceal his activities, standing behind Bevan Hurley and somewhat ironically section 68 of the Evidence Act, LF does however have a working hypothesis, the key to which lies in some fairly specific allegations Blomfield levelled at Powell, found in an email penned by Bevan Hurley.

LF suspects that Blomfield’s “media contacts” and the ability to successfully plan and execute “hatchet jobs” had been employed on many other occasions, in fact long before Blomfield had decided to turn on Powell. We also suspect that the Genesis of the relationship breakdown and problems between Powell and Blomfield lay in earkier dealings, in particular a “business model” that had proved very lucrative in generating extramural income for both Powell and Blomfield when Powell and his partners Davies and McMullen had re-acquired their stake in Hell Pizza in 2009.

Looking at the evidence LF also suspect’s that Blomfield’s more nefarious media skills had in fact been employed by Powell et al in and around the 2009 buy-back (utilising a first option/refusal clause in the 2007 contract for sale and purchase) of Hell Pizza from Tasman Pacific Foods (TPF), the purchase having been made for less than a third of what TPF had paid for the company when they had purchased it only two years earlier.

Blomfield’s own problems with TPF in 2007 are well chronicled, again by his bosom buddy Bevan Hurly and APN’s Herald on Sunday. Blomfield was at the time operating Cinderella Limited with partner Joe Mansell (more about that failed business relationship in up coming posts), The company had been contracted to market the Hell brand. TPF’s relationship with Blomfield had, unfortunately for them, been inherited from Powell and Co when TPF purchased the Hell New Zealand franchise.

Our suspicions were first born of the fact that despite Powell having been responsible for bankrupting Blomfield in 2010, he then somewhat strangely set up a company, Abraham Black Limited, that on paper appeared to be owned and operated by Warren Powell but then immediately employed Blomfield. Abraham Black Limited had also been caught up in the SFO investigation, a fact noted by Hurley in an article he wrote using information, in particular company invoices, that Blomfield had no doubt secretly passed to Hurley, as part of another hatchet job he’d planned:

“Invoices obtained by the Herald on Sunday show transactions between Abraham Black Limited and Hell Pizza are expected to make up part of the investigation.

Powell blamed a “rogue” former employee of the company for the allegations. “We fired [him] because he was an absolute ratbag.”

Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10737537

The business model Abraham Black Limited employed was simple enough, in fact it seems to have been exactly the same business model that Powell and Blomfield, in an informal partnership, had used to generate the aforementioned extramural income from the day to day  trials and tribulations of Hell Pizza Inc.

Funnily enough it’s a business model that then migrated with Blomfiled to yet another corporate entity that coincidentally” decided to use Blomfield’s services after the spectacular collapse of Powell’s Abraham Black Limited.

That company, Bell Jr Limited, was later seen lurking in the background when Slater decided to publicise Blomfield’s many nefarious, albeit by then historic, exploits. The company however moved to a front and centre position in 2012 supporting Blomfield following Slater’s complaints to the serious fraud office, the office of the Official Assignee, who were charged with overseeing Blomfield’s bankruptcy and the Ministry of Economic Development who, as a result of Slater’s intervention decided to revoke Blomfield’s special exemption under Section 385 (8) (b) of the New Zealand Companies Act 1993.

Just as Abraham Black Limited was, on paper, owned and operated by Warren Powell, with Blomfield purportedly being an employee,  Bell Jr Limited also appears, again on paper, to have been completely unrelated to Blomfield, he was and remains little more than a contractor if one is to believe public records. In fact Blomfield’s alleged position with Bell Jr has been well documented on the public record since 2012, after the various policing agencies received Slater’s complaints. Sworn affidavits were supplied by at least three Auckland Solicitors attesting to Blomfield’s brilliance as a “misunderstood” business person and his status as a contractor to Bell Jr, albeit a much admired and needed contractor.

This apparent contractor status, confirmed by the afforementioned solicitors of New Zealand’s High Court is what the various government official’s had been led to believe, confirmed over and over again with the aforementioned sworn affidavits supplied to back Blomfield’s claims.

LF in the next BlomDumps post will be bringing readers evidence that casts serious doubt over those claims, evidence that arguably is more likely to wholly corroborate the allegations Cameron Slater made in 2012, evidence of serious criminal offending, much of it as defined by the the New Zealand Crimes Act 1961:

108 Perjury defined

(1) Perjury is an assertion as to a matter of fact, opinion, belief, or knowledge made by a witness in a judicial proceeding as part of his or her evidence on oath, whether the evidence is given in open court or by affidavit or otherwise, that assertion being known to the witness to be false and being intended by him or her to mislead the tribunal holding the proceeding.

(2) In this section the term oath includes an affirmation, and also includes a declaration made under section 13 of the Oaths and Declarations Act 1957.

(3) Every person is a witness within the meaning of this section who actually gives evidence, whether he or she is competent to be a witness or not, and whether his or her evidence is admissible or not.

(4) Every proceeding is judicial within the meaning of this section if it is held before any of the following tribunals, namely:

(a) any court of justice:
(b) the House of Representatives or any Committee of that House:
(c) any arbitrator or umpire, or any person or body of persons authorised by law to make an inquiry and take evidence therein upon oath:
(d) any legal tribunal by which any legal right or liability can be established:
(e) any person acting as a court or tribunal having power to hold a judicial proceeding:
(f) a disciplinary officer, the Summary Appeal Court of New Zealand, or the Court Martial of New Zealand acting under the Armed Forces Discipline Act 1971.

(5) Every such proceeding is judicial within the meaning of this section whether the tribunal was duly constituted or appointed or not, and whether the proceeding was duly instituted or not, and whether the proceeding was invalid or not.
Compare: 1908 No 32 s 130
Section 108(4)(f): replaced, on 1 July 2009, by section 81 of the Armed Forces Discipline Amendment Act (No 2) 2007 (2007 No 98).

110False oaths
Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years who, being required or authorised by law to make any statement on oath or affirmation, thereupon makes a statement that would amount to perjury if made in a judicial proceeding.
Compare: 1908 No 32 s 132

111 False statements or declarations
Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years who, on any occasion on which he is required or permitted by law to make any statement or declaration before any officer or person authorised by law to take or receive it, or before any notary public to be certified by him as such notary, makes a statement or declaration that would amount to perjury if made on oath in a judicial proceeding.
Compare: 1908 No 32 s 133

Source: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/DLM328798.html

Much of the evidence that’s required to prove LF’s suspicions beyond doubt is contained in the “BlomDumps” files, although there was, arguably, sufficient evidence in the documents Slater had earlier been handed for the trained eye to have pieced it all together, just as the Official Assignee and Ministry of Economic Development had when they attempted to revoked Blomfield’s section 385 (8) (b) Companies Act exemption.

Once LF have pinned down a few loose ends we will then be deciding whether or not, in the interests of justice, we should publish the evidential bundle along with our conclusions.

As aforesaid Blomfield from at least 2010 onwards is seen actively and aggressively waging a vindictive clandestine campaign against Hell Pizza, Warren Powell and by default Powell’s business partners and the company’s suppliers. Blomfield had over the years either been provided with or helped himself to sensitive information with which he then used to attack Powell and his companies.

On at least one occasion the information being supplied by a TVNZ business sales manager, Jeremy Merwood, who incidentally seemed to find some measure of satisfaction from from his actions;

“and it begins! You didn’t get this from me. Fuck talk about providing an endless supply of contacts to the Herald on Sunday to look into Silly move Warren!” – Jeremy Merwood TVNZ

Source: http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/screen-shot-2014-09-16-at-2-03-18-pm.png

Merwood’s email is very interesting for a number of reasons. It certainly leaves a number of questions that need to be answered. The questions that LF would want to put to Merwood are simple enough. How was it that a confidential email sent by Warren Powell to Bevan Hurley came to be in the possession of an advertising executive working for a completely unrelated media organisation?

Who was it that supplied Merwood with the document and for what purpose was it supplied? Why did Merwood think it appropriate to then pass that email and its attachments on to Blomfield, information that Merwood, on the face of it, had absolutely no entitlement to.

At least two of these question are in fact answered for the reader in Merwood’s email to Blomfield; “You didn’t get this from me”. Merwood clearly understood what he was doing, that he was not entitled to have the email, he also undoubtedly knew, given the emails contents, that he certainly should not have been forwarding it to Blomfield in any event.

There’s also another far more disturbing inference in Merwood’s email to Blomfield “Silly move Warren”. The only available inference being of course that Merwood knew what Blomfield was up to and that Blomfield would likely be using the highly sensitive commercial information in furtherance of his own nefarious agenda.

The only question that remains unanswered then is how Merwood came to obtain Powell’s email to Hurley in the first place. This of course could have a very simple and plausible explanation. The email contained amongst other information, the details of Hell Pizza’s major suppliers and business associations. Invaluable information for someone who makes their living flogging television advertising, but of course that explanation might just be a little to simple. If it is the correct answer however it would also be a serious breach of trust and of course a number of New Zealand laws, quite possibly inclusive of Crimes Act offences, depending on the circumstances and whether or not the information was ever used to obtain a financial benefit.

The BlomDump emails that LF have obtained number in the thousands, as do the various other documents. We have brought readers a handful of documents that evidence a number of things. Probably first and foremost the above documents evidence what LF has been stating for some time now, that Blomfield has for sometime been out to make life very difficult indeed for Warren Powell. It also demonstrate’s the collusion between Blomfield and his media mates, in particular Bevan Hurley and Jeremy Merwood, collusion that was tantamount to serious corruption. There are also emails that inveigle other journalists such as Maria Slade and David Fisher.

The various documents above and others in LF’s possession prove the complete hypocrisy of Blomfield’s defamation tort, and the utter gall of Blomfield’s sham privacy complaint against Slater. Blomfield had not only been playing exactly the same game he accuses Slater of but Blomfield’s efforts were far more sinister, he had been toying with other peoples confidential information for years in an effort to ruin the reputations, both of companies and people.

Further evidence of his skullduggery is to be found in a second complaint Blomfield has made to New Zealand’s privacy commissioner. That complaint was made in November/December 2013 around the same time LF posted our story on the bullshit decision of District Court Judge Charles Blackie.

This complaint appears to have preceeded Blomfield’s complaint against Slater, however it appears that Bevan Hurley, or anyone else for that matter, from APN’s Herald on Sunday decided against publishing a story. Perhaps it’s because LF had warned Hurley and APN of the consequences of their actions should our suspicions be proven. Nevertheless Blomfield’s first complaint to the Privacy Commission was against none other than Warren Powell.

Whilst it was a complete waste of time, for the reason that Powell is no longer resident in New Zealand and therefore beyond the Commissions jurisdiction, the complaint further evidences and sustains LF’s long-held suspicion that Warren Powell had always been Matthew Blomfield’s only target; that in fact the tort against Slater was just another game he’d played, a fishing expedition with sinister motives.

More evidence of Blomfield using Hurley as an attack dog is also found in recent emails. In February 2013 Blomfield again emailed Hurley attempting to promote another idea for a story designed to damage Slater, but tellingly Hurley seems to have ignored this email;

Desite Warren Powell’s departure from Hell Pizza and New Zealand Blomfield, Hurley and Merwood clearly were not about to give up and are seen, as late as January 2013, clearly investigating ways to continue the attack on Hell Pizza (NZ) and of course Warren Powell. In an email exchange between Hurley and Blomfield dated 24th January 2013 both are seen discussing Hell, Blomfield then supplying Hurley with TVNZ sale data that had likely been supplied to him by TVNZ advertising salesman Merwood:

In our next article LF will be setting out in detail, complete with supporting documents, just how it was that Matthew Blomfield conspired successfully with Lawyers Graeme Hare, Bruce Johnson and Mike Alexander and Auckland business person Paul O’Connor to defeat his own bankrupcy, his creditors and the Official Assignee Anthony Pullan and how Blomfield later conspired to successfully defeat the New Zealand Department of Economic Development when it again moved, in response to the evidence supplied by blogger Cameron Slater, to reinstate the ban on being a company director.

LF suspects that by the time we have finished with operation BlomDump Lyn Prentice may just happen to find a whole new appreciation of team LF’s particular skill-set when it comes to the law. Perhaps he won’t be quite so quick to open his big fat fucking gob in future, save the cunt become’s LF’s next target, which if some of us on the team have our way, could be a distinct possibility.

We also suspect that the New Zealand’s Privacy Commission will be taking a closer look at their own actions, and any potential liability they may have attracted. That the New Zealand Courts may well be forced to view Matthew John Blomfield in a very different light and the New Zealand Law Society may decide to commence an investigation into the activities of at least three of their members and finally that APN and TVNZ may also feel it wise to seek legal advice, given the activities of some of their employee’s.

Of course Warren Powell has not been Blomfield’s only victim, there have been many more, a fact that Justice Raynor Asher didn’t really consider when declaring that Blomfield did not represent a threat to the welfare of Slater’s sources.

Part Two in the BlomDumps series has now been published: BlomDumps, Act II – The modus operandi of brazen fraudster’s

 

Reference/Bibliography

Note: If you are a liquidator, receiver, creditor or debtor looking for specific information always check the items listed in the area below as not all available documents appear in the body of our article’s.

If you are looking for information that relates to a specific entity or transaction that does not appear in the list below LF may still be able to assist. You should in the first instance email a member of the LF team at laudafinem@bigpond.com.

Please include the nature of your inquiry, providing bone fides and full contact details, a street mailing address or PO Box, business telephone number and after hours telephone details (most LF team members are based in European countries and may only be available to call at a time that falls outside normal NZ business hours).

If you have information that you wish to pass on to team LF please follow the same protocol as set out above, you should however advise us if you prefer to remain anonymous.

 

 

http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/email_24_jan_2013.pdf

http://www.waygook.org/index.php?topic=49336.0

http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/statement-of-claim-08_10_2012.pdf

http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/schedule-for-statement-of-claim-8_10_2012.pdf

http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/20121121143239557.pdf

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10737537

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/5259271/Pizza-director-raided-by-SFO

http://www.noordinary.co.nz/otis-leaves-hell.html

http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/civ2013-404-5218-12-09-2014-judg.pdf

http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/emails_19_jan_2011.pdf

http://www.laudafinem.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/email_5_july_2011.pdf

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10701444

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10746463

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/2405952/Founders-back-in-Hell

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/9289857/Karams-reputation-was-laid-siege-to-lawyer

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/2405952/Founders-back-in-Hell

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/NZs-Hell-Pizza-in-fiery-ad-agency-split/2007/09/07/1188783459239.html

http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/sfo-top-jobs-go-under-review-report-3436878

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11282234

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11280154

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/DLM328798.html

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/DLM328793.html

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1961/0043/latest/DLM328799.html

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0105/latest/DLM323259.html

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2006/0069/latest/DLM393681.html

http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2012/08/hotchin-smacks-the-fma-on-the-nose/

 

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