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Former league star Brent Todd's role in a pokie charity fraud prosecutors estimate at $2 million has been revealed in documents obtained by the Weekend Herald.
The former Canberra and Kiwis prop and television star could face up to five years in prison after he and business partner Stanley Wijeyaratne last week admitted their part in the alleged false invoicing racket.
Serious Fraud Office documents filed with the Auckland District Court this week, and released to the Weekend Herald, allege that between early 2000 and late 2004, the men targeted charity grants - intended to foster grassroots rugby - to the North Harbour Rugby Football Union and Touch New Zealand.
The scheme was simple, prosecutors say. No sooner had successful gaming grants been awarded through pubs owned and operated by the pair than they would file - often on the same day - fake invoices totalling about half the grant.
The bills were supposedly for consultancy work, speaking engagements, training fees, functions, building or contracting work.
"The prosecution case is that all invoices were false, and were effectively just a mechanism for Todd and Wijeyaratne to achieve kickbacks from the granting of gaming funds," an SFO statement says.
A Crown depositions statement alleges that of $1.9 million granted to North Harbour rugby through pubs operated by Todd and Wijeyaratne, about $1 million was returned to the pair through the fake invoices.
Of the $2.24 million awarded to Touch NZ from August 2002 to February 2004, about $1 million was dishonestly reclaimed.
In a report to the SFO, forensic accountant Clive Hudson said the fact that money was flowing into the organisations from gaming trusts associated with the men's pubs at the same time as cash was allegedly flowing back to "Messrs Todd and Wijeyaratne and their interests" showed there was "a direct nexus between these two facts".
Mr Hudson's 87-page report also says that on one occasion a $31,000 invoice to North Harbour rugby for "NPC travel" was used to pay for a Bali holiday for Todd and his family.
A total of $74,665 was invoiced to North Harbour in 2003 for building work the SFO claims was never carried out.
A May 2003 invoice from Princes Wharf Realty to Team Harbour Ltd - the commercial wing of the North Harbour union - for $25,800 was allegedly used to pay Todd's rent on a Viaduct apartment.
Some of the money remains outstanding, but dollar amounts and possible repayment options are suppressed.
The SFO alleges the pair took the money with the full knowledge and co-operation of the North Harbour chief executive at the time, former All Black Doug Rollerson, and Touch NZ officials Geoffrey Thompson and Alistair Arnott.
Todd and Wijeyaratne are alleged to have filed invoices through two intermediary companies, Lateral Vision, owned by former Kiwis captain Hugh McGahan, and a company owned by a woman whose identity remains suppressed.
Prosecutors say Lateral was involved from the beginning, and the second company joined about 2002.
McGahan, Rollerson, Arnott, Thompson and the woman this week pleaded not guilty and will defend the charges in the Auckland District Court next year.
They are on bail and are due in court for a call-over in early February.
Last year, Todd admitted his involvement in the "celebrity drug case", pleading guilty to procuring cocaine. He also went into voluntary bankruptcy.
