Mark Lyon outside the Auckland District Court in 2003. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Mark Lyon outside the Auckland District Court in 2003. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Opinion
OPINION:
When Mark Lyon died recently, it brought to an end one of the most spectacular falls from grace New Zealand has ever seen.
David Fisher has documented the depraved spiral of the once successful businessman well. But the story of Lyon also cracked open a window into the shadowyunderworld activity known as "taxing".
The term taxing was publicly introduced to New Zealand during 1995 depositions hearing involving Nomad gang boss Dennis Hines. The hitherto unfamiliar term was explained to the court as a form of stealing property – but in reality, taxing is much more than that, and is deeply rooted in the underworld subculture.
Taxing can take on a number of different forms, but is almost exclusively undertaken within criminal circles and is enabled by the reluctance of those who get taxed to go to the police. This reluctance is driven by the code of silence within criminal fraternities, or because victims have engaged in criminal activity themselves so prudence dictates police are best left out of it lest one's own offending is uncovered.
The criminal code of silence means that criminals are unlikely to seek redress through the usual channels of criminal justice, and therefore it becomes a dog-eat-dog world where the strong simply dominate the weak.
One form of taxing, then, is little more than crude robberies, whereby stronger groups of criminals – often gangs – take the illicit goods or profits from weaker ones. Sometimes the weaker crooks will be allowed to continue operating, but they are required to pay an ongoing tax to do so. A sole trading drug dealer, for example, will inevitably get a knock on the door at some stage from a taxman.
As one gang leader put it to me, taxing is "hood on hood", whereby those with strength take from those who are weak saying it's an easy way for a "lazy man to make an earn". It was, he said, "the law of the jungle".
Mark Lyon outside the Auckland District Court in 2012. Photo / Natalie Slade
Nowhere is the law of the jungle more evident than in prison. Weaker inmates will often have to pay a tax to avoid violence. The common price? The chicken off their plates; the protein of chicken has a high currency within New Zealand prisons where so many have so little.
Taxing can also take the form of underworld fines for real or perceived (or sometimes invented) infractions of underworld rules or other errant behaviours.
If a person had, for example, used a gang's name without permission to assist in collecting a debt or to threaten somebody else, the gang would see that as a valid reason to apply a tax (and almost certainly a sound beating, too).
Another example described to me stemmed from a major police operation into a big car theft ring. The primary target of the operation was bugged by police, and from that it was discovered that the target had a significant drug link to another well-known criminal. The police set up another operation and busted the drug operation. The drug dealer rationalised that he wouldn't have been busted but for the car thief and so the drug dealer taxed the thief for his legal costs as well as compensation for his prison time.
While the gangs will most often look outward for their taxes, they will quickly turn on their own if members break the rules or fall foul of the gang. Gang members who are kicked out in bad standing will be taxed for their motorcycle, their car, cash; whatever they have. In some gangs, just the intention to leave is enough to gain the sanction of a tax.
When Mark Lyon moved from property development and high street bars into perversion and the shady underworld, he was ripe to be taxed. And taxed he was. With things to hide and clouded by all-consuming drug addiction, crooks befriended him and taxed him. It was estimated he lost up to $750,000 dollars in cash and goods. If that is anywhere near true, Mark Lyon is almost certainly the most taxed man in New Zealand's criminal history.
The old adage says that if you lay down with dogs you get fleas, but that doesn't quite do the story justice. Mark Lyon leapt into a dog pit, was mauled, and got rabies. Few, however, will have sympathy for him. Not many New Zealanders have achieved so much just to fall so far and created innumerable damage along the way.
• Dr Jarrod Gilbert is a sociologist at the University of Canterbury and the Director of Independent Research Solutions.
