Parking executives face bribe counts

Two former senior managers of the Wilson Parking conglomerate in Auckland face multiple charges of accepting bribes and defrauding the company of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Serious Fraud Office has laid nine charges jointly against the pair, from whom the Hong Kong family-owned parking company is also trying to recover more than $600,000 in civil proceedings in the High Court.

Former branch manager Timothy Warrington Ellis, 40, and former operations manager David Bart van Dam reappeared in the Auckland District Court yesterday and were remanded on bail without plea for a pre-depositions hearing next month.

They first appeared last month on seven charges, of fraudulently using documents for financial gain and of obtaining money by deception, but two more were added yesterday.

One of the new charges alleges they received payments of $38,250 from a Mark Aspinall between May, 2003, and February last year as an inducement to favour him for a contract to supply Wilson Parking with emergency telephone systems.

That charge was laid under the Secret Commissions Act of 1910, which outlaws accepting bribes.

Other charges follow allegations that the pair signed off hundreds of thousands of dollars of invoices for carpark cleaning services to businesses they had set up with their wives, through a company controlled by Ellis' father-in-law.

Katrina van Dam and Jo-Ann Ellis have not been charged, but they are facing civil action in the High Court with their husbands, as is Mrs Ellis's father, Tony Dodd.

Mr Dodd would not comment when the Weekend Herald asked him yesterday if he was facing charges, and the Serious Fraud Office would not discuss the case.

A statement issued previously for Wilson Parking by lawyer Brent O'Callahan alleged that van Dam terminated the services of one contracting company and replaced it with Mr Dodd's firm, Platinum Property Services, for cleaning and maintaining about 18 carparks.

Mr O'Callahan said Platinum's cleaning charges were in many cases at least double the rates paid to the previous contractor, Red Coats, and that some invoices signed by the managers were for carparks the company had no obligation to clean.

Ellis resigned from Wilson Parking in October last year to become chief executive of Metro Parking, a position from which he is understood to have been stood down this week until the court case is resolved.

Van Dam, dismissed from Wilson in January, now works as a contractor for Tournament Parking.

Neither man would comment outside the court. One of their lawyers, Greg Blanchard, said the new charges laid yesterday meant they were not yet ready to enter pleas.