KEY POINTS:
The Crown has lost its bid to seize a $1.625 million Makarora farm and a Hughes-500 helicopter linked to South Westland helicopter pilot Harvey Hutton who was jailed last year on charges of greenstone theft.
Hutton, 48, was found guilty by a jury in the Dunedin District Court in August 2005 on two charges of stealing Ngai Tahu greenstone (pounamu) from the Cascade Plateau in South Westland between October 1997 and May 2004.
Last May he was sentenced to 18 months jail, with leave to apply for home detention, and was ordered to pay $300,000 reparation to Ngai Tahu.
Three months later, lawyers for the Solicitor-General applied to have the farm and the helicopter seized as "tainted property" under the 1991 Proceeds of Crime Act.
But in a written decision this week, Judge John Macdonald found that, although the farm had a connection with the greenstone theft offences, it was not "tainted".
Stolen pounamu had been stored at the farm, but "the fact remains that the offence of theft was already complete before any of the pounamu reached the Makarora property", the judge said.
If he was wrong about the farm not being "tainted property", he would not have ordered forfeiture as that would have been a disproportionate penalty, the judge said.
Both the property and the helicopter are owned by the Hutton Nolan Family Trust of which Hutton is one of the beneficiaries, and both are leased to Back Country Helicopters Ltd, a company in which the trust owns 998 of the 1000 shares.
If he ordered forfeiture of the farm and the helicopter, the total value of the forfeit property would be approximately $2.5 million, Judge Macdonald said. Taking into account the loans of about $1.153 million secured against the Trust property, its equity in the Makarora farm and the helicopter was approximately $1.012 million.
The helicopter's accepted value was $864,000 and forfeiture would also amount to a disproportionate penalty, Judge Macdonald said.
Crown lawyers Anne Toohey and Zannah Johnston of Christchurch had argued the Makarora property was tainted because it had made the theft easier by providing a location for storing and selling the pounamu.
Defence counsel Colin Withnall QC accepted the pounamu had been carried to Makarora, but argued the offences were complete when the pounamu was removed from the Cascade Plateau.
- NZPA
