Disbarred lawyer Rohineet Sharma faces 11 money laundering charges in connection with alleged offending totalling more than $600,000. He is pictured with his luxury St Heliers home, allegedly financed in part with a scam victim's stolen money. Photo / Dean Purcell
Disbarred lawyer Rohineet Sharma faces 11 money laundering charges in connection with alleged offending totalling more than $600,000. He is pictured with his luxury St Heliers home, allegedly financed in part with a scam victim's stolen money. Photo / Dean Purcell
Disbarred lawyer Rohineet Sharma allegedly used hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen from a scam victim for personal expenses.
Sharma faces 11 counts of money laundering involving more than $600,000 in total losses from two separate victims.
A High Court judge ruled the public has a right to know Sharma’s identity and the serious criminal charges he faces.
A disbarred lawyer struck off for filing false mortgage documents allegedly used hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen from a scam victim to finance his luxury St Heliers home and send his daughter to one of Auckland’s top private schools.
Disgraced Auckland solicitor and chief executive Rohineet Sharma can finally be named as the man accused of using his business bank account to receive $400,000 from luxury yacht skipper Tim Michalick, who lost his life savings to a complex investment fraud.
Sharma, 55, faces 11 counts of money laundering in alleged offending totalling more than $600,000 relating to two separate victims.
He was first charged in 2021 but can finally be identified after a judge threw out Sharma’s doomed suppression bid, ruling the public had a right to know the identity of those accused of laundering scam proceeds.
The Fijian-born professional is accused of receiving $400,000 from Michalick in February last year which the luxury launch captain thought was being invested in a low-risk HSBC term deposit.
Instead, it’s alleged the stolen cash went to a Kiwibank account under the name of Sharma’s company, Green Solar 24 Ltd.
Accused money launderer and disgraced lawyer Rohineet Sharma allegedly used a scam victim's stolen money to help finance a luxury new build of this Wai o Taiki Bay home near St Heliers. Photo / Dean Purcell
A day after landing in the account, police claim $200,000 was used to pay building contractors working on Sharma’s luxury home, or deposited into other bank accounts controlled by Sharma.
$50,000 was also allegedly used to pay his daughter’s school fees at the prestigious Diocesan School for Girls.
Sharma is also charged with money laundering in connection with more than $200,000 in losses linked to a separate victim.
Disgraced lawyer loses suppression fight
The former lawyer was struck off in 2015 after falsifying financial documents to secure a mortgage on a commercial property.
He has been fighting to keep his name secret ahead of a judge-alone trial next year. If convicted, he could face up to seven years in prison.
An affidavit he filed in support of suppression claimed his company was involved in several multi-million dollar renewable energy deals involving both local iwi and international investors. Sharma claimed publication of his name would torpedo those projects and leave him without income.
Though Sharma has pleaded not guilty to the charges, he indicated earlier this year he was prepared to pay reparation of between $180,000 and $220,000 to cover the complainants’ unrecovered losses in order to resolve his criminal proceedings.
He argued publication of his name would destroy the chances of him making those substantial reparation payments.
He further argued his mental health was at risk, claiming he was suffering nightmares about being identified and his reputation being tarnished, and had now been referred to counselling.
Disgraced lawyer Rohineet Sharma avoids the camera while appearing in the Auckland District Court last year on money laundering charges. Photo / Dean Purcell
His lawyer Nicholas Mani argued the nature of the charges Sharma faced was more “reckless” than deliberate, and that allowing his name to be published in connection with the money laundering case would cause extreme hardship.
The suppression appeal was heard this week in the High Court at Auckland before Justice Geoffrey Venning. The Herald opposed Sharma’s application, as did the Crown.
In his decision, Justice Venning threw out Sharma’s appeal and declined to extend interim name suppression pending an application to the Court of Appeal.
The decision canvassed the various arguments Sharma had made in support of his name being suppressed but found a lack of “cogent evidence” and that he fell “well short” of satisfying the necessary threshold test.
Claims about his international business ventures being at risk from publication were “speculative” the judge ruled, with legal agreements submitted as evidence of the apparent big money deals “entirely conditional”.
While it may be true that Sharma’s reputation and business could be adversely affected, Justice Venning said this was a natural consequence of being charged with serious criminal offending.
“I also note that Mr Sharma seems to have been able to deal with the fallout of being struck off as a lawyer and gone on to establish other businesses.”
In any event, Sharma’s reputation could “hardly be said to be intact”, the judge said.
“In 2015, he was struck off the roll of barristers and solicitors as he was found to have misconducted himself in a number of ways including by deliberately making a false declaration to a bank.”
Justice Venning said potential investors considering business dealing with Sharma’s company were entitled to know about the charges he faced.
“There is public interest in knowing the identity of those charged with money laundering and in particular, of receiving the proceeds of a scam.”
Accused money launderer and disgraced lawyer Rohineet Sharma pictured with his wife and daughter at a Diocesan Girls School event. Police alleged he used a scam victim's stolen money to pay $50,000 in fees to the private Auckland school. Photo supplied
The judge also questioned how Sharma intended to repay the $180,000-$220,000 reparation by February next year, saying his affidavit was “entirely without detail”.
While Sharma suggested his alleged culpability was no more than reckless, a similar submission was rejected by the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal in 2015 when he was disbarred, the decision states.
“The number of charges and amounts involved underline the seriousness of the allegation,” Justice Venning said.
“As a director of a company and with his background qualifications, Mr Sharma can be expected to have a level of understanding of the law and the obligation to not engage in money laundering, irrespective of whether he was reckless or otherwise.”
The judge also “placed little weight” on Sharma’s mental health claims, or a letter provided from his medical practice, which was written by a clinical nurse manager and “essentially relies on Mr Sharma’s self-reporting”.
Scam victim felt ‘burning hot anger’ when he faced Sharma in court
Northland luxury yacht skipper Tim Michalick lost $400,000 in a sophisticated investment scam in February 2023. Photo / Dean Purcell
Michalick, 44, has been fighting for justice and for Sharma to be publicly identified.
He helped spearhead a group of scam victims campaigning for better customer protection from banks and is speaking next week at a national anti-money laundering conference in Wellington.
Michalick was contacted by scammers posing as investment advisers after searching online for term deposit rates.
He sent his money to what he thought was a Kiwibank “cooling off” account under his own name, but alerted authorities after realising he’d been scammed 10 days later.
Kiwibank was able to recover about $200,000. When the money was refunded, Green Solar 24 Ltd appeared on Michalick’s bank statement. He Googled it to find the sole director was Sharma, whose career downfall had been reported by media in 2015.
He is shocked that Sharma had allegedly used an account to launder stolen money without being detected by Kiwibank’s fraud security systems.
“The fact he was allegedly operating this long without any oversight from the bank makes me sick to my stomach.”
Kiwibank defended its security systems and anti-money laundering processes as robust, but declined to comment further while the case is before the courts.
Michalick handed a dossier of information about Sharma to police but it took months for charges to be laid. Complaints to the Banking Ombudsman and Reserve Bank were thrown out.
He was in court to eyeball Sharma in September, saying he felt disgust and “burning hot anger” towards the accused money mule.
“I just can’t describe my hatred towards that person. He’s the lowest of the low.”
Accused money launderer and former lawyer Rohineet Sharma photographed outside Auckland District Court after an appearance earlier this year. Photo / Dean Purcell
Michalick said the last 21 months had been traumatic.
“This has ruined my f***en life.”
The Herald revealed Michalick’s story in an investigation last year. At the time he remained anonymous, concerned about the impact being identified would have on his personal and professional life.
But he decided to go public due to frustrations about the banking sector’s accountability, the ability of criminals to target Kiwis through the country’s deficient payment system with impunity, and what he describes as a “flimsy” and ineffective Banking Ombudsman Scheme leaving some victims without hope.
He felt the financial regulatory system was utterly deficient, with victims left to carry the blame.
“They’re allowing customers to operate without any scrutiny or restrictions on their banking activity and there’s no one I can turn to to hold them to account.”
