Hastings contractor claims failed prosecution cost 95% of business

Gurpreet Singh outside the Hastings District Court. Photo / Ric Stevens

Hastings labour supply contractor Gurpreet Singh says he will rebuild his business "from the bottom" after he was found not guilty of employing foreign workers without appropriate work visas.

Singh said he had lost 95 per cent of his business due to a failed prosecution by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment centred around the employment of three Indonesian workers in late 2019.

The five-day trial in the Hastings District Court was told last month that Zespri withdrew an accreditation certificate after the prosecution became known, diverting all of Singh's kiwifruit work elsewhere. He said outside the court that other growers had stopped using him also.

"We need to start again on zero," Singh said after he was acquitted by Judge Russell Collins in the Hastings District Court on Thursday.

"We can't stay home and do nothing. We need to pay our bills … If I [have] no work, maybe I'm going to bankrupt," he said.

"We're going to start again."

Asked how long it would take to rebuild his business, Singh said he did not know.

The trial centred around what Judge Collins called the "sad story" of three Indonesian men who were earning about $8 a day in Bali before they were "cruelly exploited" by being recruited to come to New Zealand with the promise of earning $3000 a month.

They had to borrow money to pay about $7500 each to their handlers.

They were met in Auckland by intermediaries, brought to Hawke's Bay and worked for about seven weeks, first in a kiwifruit orchard and then in vineyards. They lived in Singh's accommodation and believed he was their boss. They did not have proper work permits.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment prosecuted Singh and his company JJ 2016 Ltd on three charges each under sections of the Immigration Act which deal with breaching visas or allowing people to work in New Zealand who are not entitled to do so.

Singh's defence was that the men were not employed by him but by a sub-contractor, Farm Contracts Ltd.

He was found not guilty after the ANZ Bank was ordered to produce what the judge called "critical cheques" for the payment of wages.

The cheques were found to have been made out to Farm Contracts, and they married up with invoices that had been produced during the trial.

Judge Collins said Singh had established a very successful business and his counsel Scott Jefferson had consistently made the point that it would have been an "extraordinarily high risk" to hire workers himself who did not have appropriate visas.

"A man who had built such a successful company wouldn't put it at risk for so little reward," the judge said.

The judge said that whoever employed the men did so in a way to leave no paper trail whatsoever – there were no employment agreements, no pay slips and no banking records. Hire contractors were constructing dummy companies operated by people "who can quickly disappear".

Charges related to three other workers, for which evidence was not presented at the trial, were also dismissed.