Murky trail of Tua's missing millions

By PHIL TAYLOR

Boxer David Tua's manager, Martin Pugh, is accused of fraud, misappropriation and forgery in court documents that also claim the boxer is owed $4 million.

Tua's former managers, Pugh and Kevin Barry, owe $1 million and $848,000 respectively to the boxer's trading company, Tuaman Inc, according to a review of the boxer's affairs done by Tua's chartered accountant.

Tua has earned purses of about $20 million, but a Herald investigation has found that there are no assets in his name - other than a share of his parents' Mangere home - and he will have to fight in court for assets and cash held by the company. No court date has yet been set.

All of Tua's earnings were paid into Tuaman Inc when the boxer should have personally received 70 per cent of his fight earnings and 20 per cent of endorsement income.

A statement filed in the High Court and signed by Queen's Counsel Tony Molloy - one of Tua's lawyers - said Pugh and Barry had failed to prepare accounts for Tua's examination for four years.

"They have cheated him, and their conduct has left them with unclean hands."

Pugh and Barry say in their affidavits that they have done nothing wrong; accounts prepared for Tua since the break-up are wrong; and that when independent accountants appointed by the court file their report they will be vindicated.

Documents filed in the boxer's court case with Pugh and Barry allege that financial records were faked at Pugh's direction and Pugh treated the company as though it were a personal bank.

Tua claims he was misled about the value of a US$1.5m ($2.24m) sign-on fee with a United States promoter, being told it was only US$1m ($1.49m), but Barry disputes this.

Among disputed payments is $1.14 million sent to a Vanuatu company sheltered by the island nation's secrecy laws. Of this, $809,000 was sent on to Baron And Lunar Trust in New Zealand, which court documents allege is the family trust of Pugh and his partner, Sally Cross.

Tua has put his boxing career on hold while the dispute is sorted out.

He is in Auckland, where he lives in a downtown apartment with his wife, Robina.

A key witness for Tua is Jennie Grant, who used to work for Pugh, keeping the books of the boxing company. Ms Grant says in an affidavit that Pugh took advantage of Tua when he saw the chance and changed records to disguise it.

"If Mr Tua had wanted to find records relating to his affairs, to Tuaman Inc Ltd, and to the management of Pugh and Barry, he could not have made head nor tail of what was going on. Whatever I prepared was countermanded and changed by Pugh if he saw a chance to take advantage of Mr Tua. The resulting records were not 'records' at all. They were fiction."

Ms Grant said she understood Pugh had blamed her for the poor state of company records, but said the reason they were "false and misleading" lay with Pugh.

"Over the time that I have been working for him, since 1999, I have seen him forge the signatures of Mr Tua and of one other boxer on documents. Pugh has admitted to me, and shown me, the forging of my own signature on another document.

"His treatment of matters of account with Mr Tua has reflected this dishonest approach."

Ms Grant said Pugh had tried to silence her, telling her more than once that "if I ever say anything that he would hunt me down".

Pugh, in his affidavit, claims Ms Grant was forced to resign because of poor work and attendance, and that this motivated her claims.

He and Barry claim the boxer has been wrongly advised by lawyer Luke Kemp and chartered accountant Tony Forlong, whom Tua hired to sort out his affairs after he removed Tuaman Inc records from Pugh's offices last July.

Pugh denied receiving money not due to him and said he would repay any that it could be proven he was not entitled to.

He told the Herald last year that many transactions had a benefit for the boxer, but he could not go in to that for reasons he was not prepared to explain.

Barry, in his affidavit, said: "This is a cruel and calculating attempt to get everything he [Tua] can before retiring."

He said Tua was living in a "fantasy world".

"David said I started to change. The person that actually changed was him. All these stories about how fame and fortune hadn't changed him were just PR."

Pugh claimed the removal of the documents involved a kidnapping.

An employee of another of Pugh's companies called the July 5 incident a "raid" and said he was "detained" by Tua and two of the boxer's loyal associates.

Pugh and Barry filed the court action, requesting that "stolen" documents be returned and that they be allowed to continue to run Tua's affairs. They claimed that the accounts produced by Mr Forlong were incorrect.

The court action was filed in October, 10 weeks after the raid, by which time they knew Mr Forlong had serious concerns about the running of the company.

The statement of defence filed by Tua's lawyer says all of Tua's earnings were paid to Tuaman Inc, in breach of an agreement that the boxer personally be paid 70 per cent of fight fees and 20 per cent of endorsements.

Other allegations from Tua or his witnesses in court documents include:

* Pugh paid more than $1.6m of Tuaman money to his associates.

* Tua's management falsely represented to Tua that overpaid training expenses reimbursed to the company by Main Events was U$15,000 ($22,400) when it was US$52,000 ($77,700) and that they converted the balance to their own use.

* They took for their own use a further $1m held by Tuaman Inc.

* Pugh used $79,700 of Tuaman funds to pay a legal bill owed by one of his companies, unrelated to the boxing business.

* "To cover [these] conversions, misappropriations, and failures to account, thereby committing further fraud: they created, or arranged or required the creation of Sports Tech Ltd, an offshore entity in a tax haven noted for providing a cloak of secrecy; and they created falsified records of both Tuaman and Sports Tech."

* They caused Tuaman Inc, of which Pugh is listed as sole owner of the share capital, to be registered as the owner of Tua's $1.1m apartment and his $7.5m Pakiri coastal land.

* It is also alleged that as much as $750,000 of Tuaman Inc money may have been spent on improvements of the home Pugh shares with Ms Cross in an exclusive Takapuna avenue.

The boxer has also registered a caveat over Pakiri, which Pugh had signed a contract to sell. In his affidavit in reply, Pugh does not give specific responses but says Tua's new advisers are naive about the boxing business. Financial arrangements were designed to protect Tua and Barry.

But Pugh confirmed that the boxer owned only half of the Pakiri property and apartment. "These properties are the fruits of my hard work, negotiating, finding and financing."

* TOMORROW: The Herald begins a three-part investigative series revealing a one-time world heavyweight contender's fight for his future. The Tuaman break-up - the whole story - begins tomorrow.