It all kicked off yesterday at the High Court in Auckland with the media making applications for access to the full file, as to date so much about Du Val is shrouded in secrecy.
The secrecy is strange really as Du Val owners Kenyon and Charlotte Clarke lived their fake wannabe billionaire lifestyle so publicly.
Yesterday left more questions than answers.
What we do know is that the initial applications made by the FMA were “without notice”, meaning the Clarke’s and Du Val were not notified about the application for Statutory Management.
We also know it’s going to be more people than just the Clarke’s captured by the various prosecutions. Clearly the lawyers, accountants and staff at Du Val played a role.
However the FMA were at pains to say that those people who provided the affidavits and evidence used for the without notice application needed to be protected. Our suspicion is that these ‘people’ are internal whistleblowers from Du Val, and their names and details are currently redacted for privacy and possibly safety reasons.
A common theme yesterday were the discussions of not only civil proceedings, but also criminal proceedings, and a reference to
the Crown V Doyle case, which is a recent High Court judgement for restraining proceeds of crime.
The inference to the Doyle case we believe points us to what is coming.
All this leads us to the FMA, and why they want their case details to remain suppressed in its entirety.
Yesterday we spoke with one property veteran who had been messaging the FMA as far back as 2021 saying he believed that Du Val was a ticking time bomb, and had all the hallmarks of the finance company disasters from 2008 where billions of mum and dad investor funds simply evaporated.
Did the FMA investigation take too long ? Or did the FMA open its investigation too late despite being told by market insiders of what was happening? One thing is for sure, what the FMA has discovered is complex and concerning.
Have the Du Val investors lost their investment dollars because of inaction by the regulator and that’s embarrassing for the FMA?
Or, is (as we suspect) there something far greater and far more sinister going on?
In the coming days we will provide further analysis on why we believe the Du Val case is way bigger than just the mum and dad money, which in the scheme of things is only a small portion of the funds raised.
Yesterday in the High Court it was more about what was not said.
