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Yikun Zhang says the SFO has thrown him a series of challenges and humiliations, including preventing him from visiting his dying mother and frisking officers who refused to take off their shoes in his house.
The wealthy Chinese donor in the political donation case offered to transfer legal rights to $30 million worth of New Zealand property – the highest bail ever – so that he could visit his dying mother in China.
The Serious Fraud Office, which had accused him of obtaining donations to both Labor and National by deception, opposed allowing him to travel despite the $30 million pledge. After a second Supreme Court petition allowed him to go, his mother died while he was in quarantine upon arrival in his home country.
Details of the strict approach by the Crown and the SFO of Yikun Zhang, who they believe posed a flight risk and would not return to face trial, emerged Monday morning in Zhang’s trial at the Auckland Supreme Court.
Remarkably, it was revealed that when Zhang left for China, the Crown fell through and did not complete legal paperwork on Zhang’s offer to post warnings on all of his and his family’s properties in New Zealand – effectively pushing both of them out of the country. used to be. and still in control of his $30 million in assets.
His home in Remuera, Auckland, which had been the scene of private dinners in 2017 with both National Leader Simon Bridges and Labor President Nigel Haworth and Secretary General Andrew Kirton, is said to have been one of the properties offered as security.
Zhang’s defense team outlined the bail offer, missing his mother’s death, and the Crown’s failure to secure the assets offered to allow him to return, during a cross-examination of Lee Taylor, the SFO’s chief investigator in the matter of political donations.
“Mr. Zhang agreed to lose these properties if he didn’t return when he said he would,” his attorney Lauren Lindsay said. “At the time, it was the largest deposit ever offered in New Zealand.”
When asked why the Crown has not acted on and placed legal warnings on the properties, Taylor said, “I don’t quite understand the process. I have not applied for any warnings on properties related to bail cases.”
Lindsay: “Because the SFO didn’t take such steps, Mr. Zhang could have transferred his assets and stayed in China and you couldn’t have done anything about it.”
Taylor: “I couldn’t say if that’s possible or not.”
‘You haven’t taken any steps. But Mr. Zhang has returned to New Zealand to participate in this process.”
Lindsay’s interrogation said the SFO faced Zhang with a series of challenges and “humiliations”, including seizing 26 electronic devices via a search warrant at his home just four days before he was set to lead an international Teochew convention in Auckland. The nine searching officers had not taken off their shoes, as requested and expected in Chinese homes, citing “health and safety reasons”.
She said there was nothing to indicate that he had not been candid, cooperative and consistent with the SFO in interviews.
Crown attorney John Dixon QC intervened twice when Lindsay suggested that Zhang had been cooperative and consistent, telling Judge Ian Gault the questions were “dangerous.”
“I can’t say why,” Dixon said. “It opens all kinds of doors, Your Honor.”
Four days after Zhang left New Zealand to go to China, Taylor attempted to contact his wife, Anna, to arrange an interview, albeit two years after her husband was charged.
Lindsay asked Taylor why he had pursued Anna Zhang directly, despite knowing she had legal representation, both via email and visiting her home when he knew her husband was in China.
She was eventually interviewed, but Lindsay said her presence at the political dinners at her home had long been known to the SFO.
The extent of the SFO’s use of its powers to compel witnesses to appear for interviews or provide documents is becoming increasingly apparent through the judicial process.
It was revealed Monday that the office had used its power under Section 9 of the Serious Fraud Office Act last month to force the media company Stuff Ltd to release a document that turned out to be a press release issued by a public relations firm in 2020. that included a line that Zhang would “firmly defend” the charges.
The Section 9 message forced Stuff’s editor-in-chief Mark Stevens to produce the “document,” which it did.
Lindsay told the court in her questioning that the SFO had sent 170 notices to individuals and organizations during the double investigation into National and Labor donations.
In addition to defendants, the Labor Party and alleged donors in this case, these included the Ministry of Trade, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), domain hosting companies, banks, airlines, the immigration service and telecommunications companies.
She showed a Section 9 message to Spark’s call investigator in April 2019 demanding subscriber information and full details of phone and text messages for six phone numbers between January 2016 and April 2019. This even included polling data from mobile sites. Similar information was needed from Vodafone and 2 Degrees.
The attorney told Taylor, “You have obtained huge amounts of documentation,” noting that a previous SFO technical witness had “admitted it was in the millions of documents.”
Zhang, Ross, Colin Zheng and his twin brother Joe Zheng are on trial for solicitation by deception in connection with two $100,000 donations to National, in 2017 and 2018, which the Crown claims were broken up into small amounts and through others “sham donors” to hide their ancestry and hide their identities from the public.
Those four defendants and three others with name suppression are also facing similar charges over a net donation of $35,000 to Labor from an art auction in 2017. All defendants have pleaded not guilty in the trial, which is in its fifth week.