Fashion house creator to stand trial on drugs and receiving counts

The founder of a high-profile fashion label will stand trial for his alleged part in a cannabis cultivation operation, and for receiving stolen property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Jason Campbell Crawford, 35, a co-creator of the design house Insidious Fix, appeared at an Auckland District Court depositions hearing yesterday, where he maintained not guilty pleas but conceded he had a prima facie case to answer

He faces a number of charges, including cultivation of cannabis and allowing his premises to be used to grow the drug, and receiving stolen goods worth $600,000.

Frances Kitson, 43, Jeremy Clive Simeon, 35, and Benjamin Dominic Merrett, 29, are also charged in the cannabis offending.

Crawford was arrested following police raids on a premises housing his Insidious Fix label. Police at the time of his arrest described the cannabis operation as "huge and sophisticated". More than 200 plants were found in rooms on the property.

But his lawyer, Gary Gotlieb, said Insidious Fix operated out of the same factory but had no link to the area where the cannabis was found.

"He's got some items and things on his property which are not that flash but they're not major charges. But [police] are trying to lump him in with all this next door."

The 11-year-old clothing label featured in last year's Air New Zealand Fashion Week, with Crawford and business partner Kylee Davis taking a curtain-call on mini chopper bikes.

The knitwear label burst on to the fashion scene when Crawford and Davis, then studying textile design at the Auckland Institute of Technology, won the Benson & Hedges Supreme Fashion Award in 1995.

Insidious Fix was awarded a trade and export award worth $16,000 at Fashion Week in 2004.

Crawford has since resigned his directorship, but remains a sole director of A-Z Ltd.

All four men were yesterday committed for trial and remanded on bail to call-over dates later in the year.