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Fourteen lawyers in New Zealand have been struck off since 2019 for misconduct.
The New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal can order a lawyer be struck off the Roll of Barristers and Solicitors of the High Court of New Zealand, meaning they can no longer practise law here.
The majority of struck-off lawyers’ misdemeanours involved fraud.
While lawyers are qualified to offer advice about the law and represent clients in legal matters, that doesn’t always mean they follow the rules themselves.
Fourteen lawyers in New Zealand have been “struck off” from practising law since 2019. Here, we look at what each lawyer did wrong,and the penalties they received.
There are 15,640 lawyers with current practising certificates in New Zealand as of June 2023, all of them under the control of the New Zealand Law Society.
When a lawyer is found guilty by the Law Society of a disciplinary offence, the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal can order that they be struck from the Roll of Barristers and Solicitors of the High Court of New Zealand.
When struck off, a lawyer cannot hold a practising certificate or practise law in New Zealand.
This list doesn’t include practitioners who have been struck off by the Disciplinary Tribunal but are currently appealing that decision.
2024
Joanne Hineiao Cottrell
Wellington immigration lawyer and adviser Joanne Hineiao Cottrell was struck off after she deliberately misled migrant clients and Immigration New Zealand, exploiting them out of self-interest.
Instead, they ended up painting a home owned by Cottrell and working for companies operated by her and a friend - for just $12 an hour, under the table.
Cottrell then submitted a false organisational chart to Immigration New Zealand showing the two migrants worked as engineering technicians and building estimators.
She was convicted on three charges in 2022 and was struck off as a lawyer on August 6 this year.
“There was an obvious breach of trust; you were working as a lawyer and had a duty to these victims,” Judge Peter Hobbs said.
Cottrell was convicted of providing false or misleading information to Immigration New Zealand alongside two further charges of aiding and abetting a person to breach their visa conditions.
She was also ordered to pay $40,000 in legal costs.
Wellington lawyer Alwyn O’Connor was struck off for taking more than $150,000 from an imprisoned client and “using the money as if it was his own” to pay his debts.
While he put most of that money back, a further $25,000 was withdrawn from the account using an eftpos card O’Connor was entrusted with while his client was in prison.
O’Connor was also found guilty of negligence concerning his work on an employment matter and the tribunal also noted that O’Connor had failed to disclose two bankruptcies when applying for a certificate of character previously.
The New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal said O’Connor’s criminal history, combined with the serious nature of the conduct, meant that strike-off was “the only penalty which the tribunal considered”.
In 2008, O’Connor, who was then known as Alwyn Kingsbeer, was found guilty by a jury of assault with a weapon and sexual violation after he inserted a ballpoint pen into a boy’s anus and a drawing pin into the head of the child’s penis.
He also twisted his ears, rubbed his head onto the carpet causing burns, and flushed his head in a toilet.
The Crown agreed to downgrade its initial charges of assault with a weapon and sexual violation and O’Connor later pleaded guilty to an alternative charge of wilful ill-treatment of a child and served 11 months in prison.
O’Connor was also ordered to pay $25,000 in compensation and costs.
Alwyn O'Connor. Photo / Supplied
Duncan Takena Stirling
Duncan Takena Stirling was barred from practising as a lawyer after misappropriating $85,000 from his bank.
Stirling admitted the five charges of misconduct against him which included deception of his bank and misappropriation of funds, “persistent” overdrawing of the trust account, discharging a mortgage without having repaid it, filing false trust certificates and misappropriating funds from his overdrawn trust account.
As a result of the findings, Stirling resigned from his position on Waipā District Council.
Stirling showed deep remorse for the conduct and immediately accepted responsibility, therefore the tribunal said it was “not unthinkable” he could practise law again.
The tribunal ordered that Stirling’s name be struck off the roll of barristers and solicitors and he was ordered to pay $5000 in legal costs.
Former Waipā District Council Māori Ward councillor Takena Stirling. Photo / Waipā District Council
2022
Wayne Revell
Hamilton lawyer Wayne John Revell was struck off after it was revealed he evaded income tax for 10 years and spent client money at a Cosmopolitan Club.
Revell had pleaded guilty to tax evasion over 10 years from 2007/8 to 2017 after he failed to pay tax on money earned both through his partnership and outside the partnership.
He received multiple warnings from Inland Revenue (IRD) from 2010 onwards but failed to respond and claimed that his former partner was responsible for paying his tax.
The second charge concerned wilful misconduct arising from “irregularities” with his trust account, where lawyers hold client funds.
Revell made 13 “irregular” transfers from his trust account holding clients’ money, to his personal practice account and spent it on personal items in 2019.
He narrowly avoided a prison term for evading income tax after repaying the IRD the tax he owed shortly before sentencing late in 2020.
Revell was ordered to pay the Standards Committee’s and tribunal’s costs.
Wayne John Revell, who was struck off as a lawyer on December 16, 2022 at a tribunal hearing in Auckland after admitting 10 years of tax evasion. Photo / Supplied
Caroline Sawyer
Wellington lawyer and former Victoria University senior law lecturer Caroline Sawyer was struck from the bar for abusing the court process and accusing rival lawyers who won against her of corruption.
Sawyer’s conduct in managing both her own litigation and the cases of her clients was ”disruptive and demonstrated that she could not be trusted to behave within acceptable bounds” the tribunal said.
Her conduct problems stem back to 2015 when she made a complaint about two colleagues at Victoria University before signing a confidential employment settlement.
She breached her agreement over nearly eight years, racking up a string of fines and after repeated unsuccessful appeals she was found to have provided untruthful evidence.
Sawyer filed proceedings in the High Court and the Court of Appeal challenging the validity of the settlement, which were dismissed as being an abuse of process and described as misconceived.
She made unfounded claims about a large number of lawyers, including accusing an opposing lawyer of receiving a “kickback” from the court that ruled in his favour.
She didn’t engage in the tribunal hearing about her misconduct, instead sending an email claiming that the court system was corrupt and enabled “the drug trade and child pornography”.
The tribunal found Sawyer was not a fit or proper person to practise law in New Zealand and “had lost any sense of judgement or perspective” and she was ruled to pay the Law Society a $31,000 fine.
Mehal Kejriwal
Former Auckland lawyer Mehal Kejriwal was struck off after less than a year in the profession after repeatedly swindling client fees.
The misconduct involved three instances of fraudulent conduct, designed to obtain funds for her own benefit.
She changed a fee invoice purportedly issued by her employer to include her bank details instead of the firm’s on November 24 and December 6 2017.
Kejriwal then forged an invoice using the letterhead of another firm on December 22. The invoice related to a transaction relating to a distribution of funds from an estate totalling $129,025.
“Instead of paying the funds into the trust account of the law firm whose letterhead had been forged, they were redirected into the bank account number provided at the foot of the falsified invoice, namely the account belonging to the practitioner’s friend,” the decision said.
She was also ordered to repay her former employer in full as well as the Standards Committee’s costs of $12,833.88 and the tribunal’s costs of $4102.
Helen Holland
Auckland lawyer Helen Holland was struck off after siphoning more than $400,000 from her parents’ estate.
She was found guilty of misconduct stemming from breaches of fiduciary duties to her siblings in her management of her parents’ estates and affairs.
The tribunal found she had made loans of at least $415,000 to herself and her sister from her father’s estate. The exact amount of money stolen will never be known because of the lack of paperwork provided to the tribunal.
“She benefited personally. Her failure to account continues, years later,” deputy chairperson Judge John Adams wrote in his decision.
The tribunal believed her conduct wasn’t a one-off, and misapplying estate funds - including to herself - occurred over many years and many transactions.
Michael Rawiri Taia
Serious defaults in client care and persistent failures to engage in an investigation led to Michael Rawiri Taia being struck off as a lawyer.
Taia was fined and subject to a supervision order in 2018 after he failed to comply with an order to refund money to former clients and requests from clients to uplift documents and records held on their behalf.
He also failed to cooperate with the Standards Committee investigation.
The second charge arose from Taia’s lack of response after Land Information New Zealand queried three e-dealing certifications Taia had facilitated in 2015. The tribunal observed that in the seven years since then, Taia’s “rare responses consisted solely of attempts to postpone resolution”.
The third charge was for failing to declare outstanding fines in his “fit and proper” declaration for a practising certificate in 2019.
Taia was ordered to pay compensation of $2327.60 and pay the Standards Committee’s costs of $18,614 and reimburse the New Zealand Law Society for the tribunal’s costs of $2,693.
2021
Jesse Nguy
Lawyer Jesse Nguy was struck off for misappropriating money after using a client’s funds to pay off his debts and a house renovation in Devonport.
Nguy, who was the principal of former Auckland law firm Jesse & Associates, was found guilty of unsatisfactory conduct in five separate determinations.
In four instances Nguy used his client’s funds for his own purposes. In one case, he used deposits totalling more than $1 million to make 20 payments over two years, including debits towards a luxury car and a property.
Nguy was also found to have compromised his independence as a lawyer when he entered a business arrangement to purchase a property transaction with a client and company New Dawn Holdings Ltd.
Nguy acted as a lawyer for the client who borrowed more than $1m to buy the home, but Nguy concealed from the bank his 75 per cent share in the company New Dawn Holdings Ltd.
Nguy failed to settle the house purchase for the client and stole the money, which resulted in the client being ordered to repay the $1.3m loan to the bank.
The committee concluded Nguy had breached “a whole raft of rules relating to conflicting interests”.
Nguy was ordered to pay costs and expenses and a fine of the maximum sum of $15,000.
2020
Boon Gunn Hong
Auckland lawyer Boon Gunn Hong was censured after transferring a client’s property into his name, without the client’s knowledge, before trying to evict them.
Hong, who has a chequered disciplinary history dating back to the 1990s, had already been suspended before the strike-off order came into effect at the start of June 2020.
The findings of misconduct were for Hong’s personal involvement in transactions and financial dealings with clients, whom he has had a long-running dispute with over the purchase of a property in September 2005.
Hong was found to have transferred the title into the sole ownership of a company under his exclusive control, before eventually transferring the property to himself personally.
Auckland Standards Committee counsel Paul Collins said Hong had betrayed his clients under the guise of a financial rescue package.
“In doing so, he not only failed in his obligation to protect their interests but in fact caused harm to their interests,” he submitted.
The tribunal also ordered Hong to pay costs to the Law Society of $29,450, costs to the tribunal of $6923, and $8000 in compensation to his former client.
Lawyer Boon Gunn Hong, pictured outside the Auckland District Court in 2013. Photo / File
Lindsay Gribben
Wairarapa lawyer Lindsay Boyd Gribben was struck off and charged after stealing $900,000 from four clients over 10 years.
The misappropriation involved numerous transactions (at least 170 were traced) between September 2009 and November 2018.
Some of the clients resided overseas and were reliant on Gribben operating accounts for them in New Zealand and acting on transactions on their behalf. Two of the other clients were elderly clients in rest homes.
The tribunal said Gribben “compounded his misdeeds by blaming one of his elderly clients as ‘known to be spendthrift’ and ‘suffering from a mental disorder’.”
Gribben pleaded guilty to nine charges of theft and fraud and was sentenced to prison for three years, and eight months, the Wairarapa Times-Age reported.
Arlan Arman
Auckland defence lawyer Arlan Arman was struck off following a “pattern of incompetent practice” which included his advice leading to a miscarriage of justice.
Three cases of miscarriages of justice occurred over three years where clients of Arman had their convictions quashed on appeal because he failed in his professional duties.
He was found to have pressured his client to plead guilty to three sex charges. The guilty pleas were later set aside and Arman’s client was acquitted after a jury trial with a new lawyer.
The case which ended Arman’s legal career was a client who was a male model who started masturbating while posing nude for a sculptor.
Arman cut a deal with the police prosecutor to lower the charge from indecent assault, which carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison, if his client agreed to plead guilty to an indecent act with intent to offend.
Arman failed to show the client the summary of facts which he pleaded guilty to. Arman also failed to take evidence from his client as to his version of events or ask the police for all the available evidence to be disclosed to him.
Justice Mark Woolford said a miscarriage of justice had occurred as the model did not understand the nature of the charge and Arman failed to identify possible defences.
The conviction was overturned in December 2018, and the prosecution abandoned.
The third miscarriage of justice involving Arman was detailed in a Court of Appeal judgment which quashed the convictions of a man convicted of historical sex offences after a trial in 2018.
The man denied the allegations and wanted to discuss with Arman the possibility of giving evidence in his own defence. However, he signed a handwritten note given to him by Arman confirming he did not want to take the stand at his trial.
“Mr Arman did not adequately explain the advantages and importance of giving evidence ... Of particular relevance is the fact that the defence was one of denial and [the man] had not provided any statement to the police.”
Arman was ordered to refund a client $8385, pay the Standards Committee $16,988.50, and pay tribunal costs of $2767.
Lawyer Arlan Arman was struck off. Photo / Doug Sherring
2019
Mohammed Idris Hanif
Former lawyer Mohammed Idris Hanif was struck off and sentenced to 10 months home detention on five charges of providing false or misleading information to Immigration New Zealand that helped enable human trafficking.
In 2014, Hanif provided legal services to Faroz Ali, who later became the first person to be convicted of human trafficking in New Zealand.
Hanif made false visa applications which enabled three victims of human trafficking to remain in New Zealand and continue to work and be exploited by Ali.
“Hanif completed applications stating that the reason the victims wanted to stay longer in New Zealand as visitors was to undertake recreational activities. The true reason they wanted to stay was to continue to work for Ali in the hope their lifetime opportunity would be realised,” Immigration New Zealand said.
The victims were charged large sums of money for the opportunity to come to and work in New Zealand. When they arrived they were forced to work illegally for little money and long hours and were housed in degrading cramped conditions.
Hanif was also ordered to pay $1575 in reparations to the three exploited Fijian workers.
Former lawyer Mohammed Idris Hanif outside the Manukau District Court. Photo / Greg Bowker
Gang (Richard) Chen
Former lawyer Gang (Richard) Chen was struck off and imprisoned for his involvement in a “premeditated and prolonged” $54 million mortgage fraud scheme.
Chen was part of a quartet charged by the Serious Fraud Office over 76 Auckland and Hamilton properties and suspicious mortgages, involving 57 loan applications and 110 transactions.
The group used false information and documents, or withheld information from banks to obtain loans of more than $54m for the properties between December 2011 and October 2015.
Chen’s role included providing the banks with false passports, making false declarations, making false salary payments into bank accounts of loan applicants and corruptly paying secret commissions to employees of BNZ and ANZ.
Chen was found guilty by the High Court in June 2018 of 10 charges.
He was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in August 2018, having been found by the High Court to be the “glue that held the fraudulent scheme together”.
Lawyer Gang Chen. Photo / Michael Craig
Jaime Lyth is a multimedia journalist for the New Zealand Herald, focusing on crime and breaking news. Lyth began working under the NZ Herald masthead in 2021 as a reporter for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei.
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