Sex offender's 1988 dishonesty convictions quashed

A convicted sex offender who won notoriety in New Zealand's first and biggest GST fraud yesterday had his dishonesty convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal - 17 years after he was sentenced to six years' jail.

Graham Ashley Robert Palmer, 56, was convicted in March 1988 on charges of fraud, theft, forgery and perverting the course of justice following a $2.6 million GST fraud.

He is serving a sentence of preventive detention at Auckland's Paremoremo Prison for later sex offences.

The Court of Appeal today overturned Palmer's 1988 convictions and gave him leave to appeal the verdicts and apply to withdraw his guilty pleas in the High Court.

"We see no alternative but to turn the clock back to March 30, 1988 ... That is the order we consider 'justice requires'," Justices William Young, Robert Chambers and Bruce Robertson said in a reserved decision following a hearing in June.

Palmer was unrepresented, and physically and mentally injured following a prison assault which left him with concussion, during the 1988 hearing, the Court of Appeal said.

- NZPA