Millions of dollars in assets belonging to Stephen Borlase, who was jailed for bribery scandal involving Auckland Transport, are frozen. Photo / Jason Oxenham
A corrupt former managing director of an engineering firm jailed in New Zealand's largest bribery prosecution is back in court - this time fighting for a living allowance to be released from $8.6 million in frozen assets.
The millions of dollars in assets belonging to Stephen Borlase and his wife
Catherine Borlase were frozen after the former head of roading contracting business Projenz was charged, convicted and jailed.
Borlase was sentenced to five and a half years' imprisonment in February 2017 alongside Murray Noone, a former senior manager at Auckland Transport and Rodney District Council, who was jailed for five years.
The pair's offending saw a pattern of kickbacks from Projenz to Noone - more than $1m over seven years - for Noone to award contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to Borlase's company between 2005 and 2013.
Police were granted freezing orders in September 2017 for some $8.6m, including a multimillion-dollar property portfolio, bank accounts containing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a car collection which included a 1963 Ford Fairlane.