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Former TV host and radio journalist Peter Verschaffelt says delays in hearing a drug charge against him have cost him more than $200,000 in lost earnings.
Verschaffelt, 60, is facing one charge of being a party to the manufacture of methamphetamine and one of attempting to pervert the course of justice.
The charges were laid more than two years ago but have yet to reach a depositions hearing. Verschaffelt is on bail.
A depositions hearing that was to have been held in North Shore District Court yesterday was adjourned until May without any evidence being heard, and for the final time, after Verschaffelt told Judge David Wilson he was desperate to get to court so he could show there was no case to answer.
The adjournment followed a successful application to the judge from his lawyer, Roger Chambers, to withdraw from the case. Verschaffelt told the court he learned from Mr Chambers after 5pm on Tuesday that evidence from witnesses was to have been handed up, meaning he could not cross-examine them yesterday.
"This was to be my first opportunity to make a case that there is no case against me," Verschaffelt told the court after Mr Chambers had left.
He said delays in getting the case to a depositions stage were not of his making but it was costing him $100,000 a year in lost earnings because no one would employ him while the charges "hang over me".
- NZPA
