Boxing: The unravelling of the David Tua camp

A three-part Herald investigation, Today: how Tua learned the awful truth about his missing millions. By PHIL TAYLOR


In the dark of a July evening, David Tua took a drive north over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. It was a trip that spelled the end of the boxer's relationship with his managers, Kevin Barry, an Olympic medallist like Tua, who had worked with the Samoan for 11 years, and the money man, Martin Pugh.

With Tua that Friday night was a loyal friend, Billy Statham. Statham was Tua's mate before the boxer was news - back when Tua washed dishes for a living at an Auckland city hotel. During Tua's professional career, too, Statham's been there as cook, protector, friend.

What was about to happen has been described by Barry and Pugh as a "kidnapping". The victim calls it a "raid" and says he was "contained" by Tua.

His name is Jamie Simonsen, a computer programmer who works for Pugh. Here's his account of that night:

Tua and Statham arrive at Simonsen's Milford home and tell him they need some Tuaman merchandise which is stored in Pugh's Victoria St West offices, and ask for the keys.

Simonsen points out there are two alarms and five locked doors and suggests it's simpler for him to go with them.

Once at the offices, Tua collects some product, suggests Simonsen note it for company records and then makes a phone call.

Once off the phone, Tua turns to Simonsen. "David said he needed to talk to me and he pulled me into Martin Pugh's office, shut the door and contained me," Simonsen says in an affidavit.

"He told me he was really there to remove everything in the office that was his, and that he was leaving Pugh and Barry. I asked him why. He said Pugh was stealing money.

"I asked if he had talked to Kevin Barry about it. Then he told me Kevin Barry was involved with Pugh."

Simonsen says he asked about proof and the boxer answered that he'd been told "little things" and he was there to get proof, to learn how Tuaman Inc - the company through which his affairs were handled - had been run. Asked why he hadn't discussed his concerns with Pugh or Barry, Tua had replied, "Too late for that".

Soon after, Tua's wife Robina, Jason Brott, who has worked as a security guard at Tua fights, and Jennie Grant - an accountant who did the books for Pugh - arrived and began removing files at Grant's direction. The computer on which Tuaman Inc accounts were kept and a disk containing a copy of Pugh's personal files were among items taken.

Brott, who has a Tuaman tattoo, is broad like Tua, tall like Lennox Lewis, the British heavyweight Tua fought for a world title in November 2000. Simonsen says he is neither, and felt in no position to argue.

"I felt helpless, confused and frightened with the fact that Billy Statham, Jason Brott and David Tua were all twice the size of me. Even if I could have done something, it wasn't worth being seriously hurt over. I decided that I'd not do anything to rock the boat."

He says he did, however, tell Tua that some people had worked up to 14 years for Jetz, a business of which Pugh is a boss, and that Pugh had done them no wrong. "But, by this point, David Tua was looking very agitated and was clenching his fists and slowly nodding his head from side to side. I took this as a sign of anger and was very frightened. I didn't want to provoke him, so I just stopped talking."

Simonsen says pictures were taken from office walls. One the boxer didn't want was of him and Pugh together, smiling. Tua picked it up, "held a clenched fist to it as if he was going to smash it".

It was July 25. By the time they'd loaded what they wanted into two vehicles, more than two hours had passed. As Tua and Statham drove him back to his Milford home, Simonsen says the boxer commented that his managers had been stealing for a long time; it was time to take his career into his own hands.

Simonsen was asked not to tell Pugh about the raid and he didn't for three days, even denying any knowledge when Pugh raised it.

On Saturday night he let Statham back into the offices to remove the safe.

On this occasion, says Simonsen, Statham told him he'd long been suspicious because of documents he'd seen in Barry's office in Las Vegas before Barry took to locking his door.

Tua's misgivings about his management date to soon after Pugh was introduced to the business at Barry's urging about 1999.

According to documents Tua has filed in the High Court, Barry was convinced Pugh's style of fast-talking, street-smart commerce was just what they needed.

Barry and Pugh met through Barry's gym. Pugh is a regular at the Les Mills gym next door, but his partner, Sally Cross, took exercise classes at Barry's gym.

Tua tells in his affidavit how Pugh became part of the business, and the events which led to the breakup. Barry told him Pugh was a smart guy who was a multimillionaire at a young age. It appears the boxer didn't know that, at the age of 26, these millions had apparently vanished. Pressed by creditors to honour some expensive personal guarantees, Pugh declared himself bankrupt in May 1990.

Six years after Pugh was discharged from bankruptcy, Tua signed a management contract with him and Barry, and gave Pugh a power of attorney. Tua says he signed because of his trust in Barry, who worked as a plasterer before becoming Tua's manager several years before.

Tua had long ago welcomed Barry into his family. "For me to take Kevin Barry home to my parents was big. This was my way of showing trust. This meant Kevin Barry would be regarded as if he was a member of my own family."

Before long, he says, alarm bells began to ring. It was to do with Tua joining American boxing promoter America Presents. Tua says he can pinpoint the moment. Pugh was on a cordless phone negotiating with the Americans when he walked from the room, out of the boxer's earshot.

Tua formed the impression Pugh didn't want him to hear. "It may seem small ... [but] the way it was done made me uneasy."

Pugh told Tua that America Presents paid a sign-on fee of US$1 million ($1,499,405). Among things Tua was to discover after sacking his managers was that the amount was in fact US$1.5 million ($2,248,904).

Tua's parents encouraged him to see their lawyer, Tua Saseve, an accomplished sportsman who played rugby for Auckland. Saseve doubted the contract was enforceable, was concerned the set-up gave Pugh total control, and that the contract was unfairly weighted in favour of the managers with all expenses to come out of Tua's cut. Among shortcomings Saseve noted were there was no requirement for the managers to keep accurate records or account to Tua for spending.

Saseve drew up a replacement contract.

Tua signed, Barry and Pugh refused. Barry reacted angrily, apparently affronted at the slight to his integrity. Tua backed down. It was months before his world title bout against Lewis.

Tua says he was talked around, told by his managers the legal bill to change contracts would be $20,000. Barry had said he should just trust them to look after his best interests, that he needed to concentrate on his next fight.

"Going into the ring with a heavyweight boxer and a whole lot of distractions is a way to commit suicide. So, I went along with this. I felt I had to ... but I started to notice Kevin Barry was starting to change. He started to get more like Martin. I didn't like this."

The catalyst, however, for the July 25 raid was Jennie Grant.

Grant began working for Pugh in January 1999, taking up the accounting duties later that year for the boxing company. By last July she had fallen out with Pugh. She handed in her notice on the 23rd of that month.

The reason is disputed. She claims she'd become disillusioned with Pugh, who she believed was "untrustworthy" in his handling of Tua's financial interests. However Pugh, supported by an ex-girlfriend who works in the offices, and by Simonsen, says Grant's attendance was poor and her work substandard.

At a meeting requested by Tua, Grant met the boxer and Robina, and blew the whistle on Pugh's "shabby" treatment of him. According to court documents, this includes misappropriating Tuaman Inc money, fraud and forgery, including of the boxer's signature.

She says Tua had no chance of understanding what happened simply by looking at the company's accounts, because these were "fiction".

"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."

This was the flavour of what she told Tua and his wife at their meeting.

The details included that money had gone from Tuaman Inc in all directions - to overseas accounts, to Pugh and Barry for their private purposes, to pay for the refurbishment of Pugh's Takapuna home. And she told him America Presents had paid a sign-on fee of $1.5 million, not $1 million.

She may also have said, as she did in her affidavit, that Pugh had threatened that if she talked, "he would hunt me down".

The bombshell, though, was that the properties he says he thought were his alone - a 50ha sweep of coastal land at Pakiri and his inner-Auckland penthouse home - were not.

Grant told him Pugh owned half of Pakiri. The apartment was owned by Tuaman Inc, of which Tua owns only 50 per cent of the shares.

Because he knew how money earned was supposed to be split, but not how company shares were divided, Tua says at that moment, "I thought I owned nothing".

The morning after the raid on Pugh's offices was Saturday. Tua and Grant moved about $700,000 from Tuaman accounts at ASB Bank and Westpac into a personal account in the boxer's name.

Grant says she did this to give the boxer direct access to some of his money, as she had resigned.

Under the management contract only 30 per cent of Tua's fight purses and 80 per cent of endorsement and media income were to be taken by the company, but in practice all income went into Tuaman Inc.

This meant Tua had to go to Grant each time he needed money and she would use her signing authority to pay him.

By the time Pugh arrived at work the following Monday, the $700,000 was in Tua's personal bank account. Pugh walked up the stairs to his offices to discover they'd been raided.

He contacted the banks, which froze Tuaman and Tua's personal bank accounts. They remain frozen, each party requiring a court order to receive money from them.

Meantime, Tua looked for someone to make sense of the boxes of documents he had. Tua's friend, former All Black Inga Tuigamala, introduced him to his lawyer, Luke Kemp, and chartered accountant Tony Forlong.

The lawyer's first move was to list Tua in the Companies Office as a director of Tuaman. Tua was the biggest shareholder, yet until then Pugh had control.

The first the public knew of a problem came in September when Tua told Sportstalk host Murray Deaker he had sacked his managers.

Tua's decision to make the sacking public was a blow to his managers' hope for a reconciliation, and in early October they filed a claim in the High Court alleging the documents were stolen and demanding they be returned.

Until then they may have thought Tua could be persuaded. At a meeting in early August, Pugh said to the boxer: "I swear on the life of my son, I have done nothing wrong."

He'd told him the new accountant, Forlong, would be able to reassure him his affairs were in order. After Tua announced the split, Barry flew in from Las Vegas and Pugh returned from holiday in Australia in a desperate bid to patch things up.

But by then Forlong had been through the documents. There were many surprises.

THE PLAYERS

1. David Tua: Only living New Zealander to have fought for a world heavyweight boxing title. Won an Olympic bronze before turning professional in 1992. Earned $20 million in fight purses in professional career. Raided company offices and sacked managers last year after suspecting they were stealing.

2. Kevin Barry: Boxer-turned-trainer-turned-manager. Won silver Los Angeles Olympics 1984. Been with Tua since 1992, brought Pugh in as co-manager. Since breakup with Tua has sided with Pugh. Says though he doesn't understand all Pugh did, believes he has acted honourably.

3. Martin Pugh: Former nightclub owner, discharged bankrupt, involved in point-of-sale technology and developing "penis products" - a drug to make Viagra work quicker. Took over Tua's boxing business in 1999.

4. Billy Statham: Loyal friend of Tua's who helped to raid the company offices.

5. Jason Brott: Worked for Tua as security guard at world title challenge in Las Vegas. Was a friend of Barry's and Pugh's but loyal to Tua.

6. Jennie Grant: Whistleblower employed by Pugh to do the boxing company accounts. Fell out with Pugh. Told Tua his managers were ripping him off. Helped in the raid of the company offices.

7. Jamie Simonsen: Computer programmer, works for one of Pugh's businesses. Says Tua and Statham got him to unlock offices on a pretext. He was detained while offices were raided and feared for his safety.

NEXT WEEK

PART TWO:

On Wednesday, we follow the money-trail from Tuaman Inc to property purchases and business accounts and expose how a petty criminal came to play a mysterious part in Tua's world.

PART THREE:

Phil Taylor's investigation concludes next Saturday with the sex and partying story of others unwittingly caught up in the title-fighter's affairs and just how little money there is left to fight over.

* Email Phil Taylor