CBL Insurance: Chief financial officer can now be named as fraud accused

Monday, 14 December 2020

Two men will go to trial next year over an alleged fraud linked to CBL Insurance.

A man charged in relation to an alleged multimillion-dollar fraud linked to collapsed insurer CBL can now be named as the company's former chief financial officer.

Last Monday, the Court of Appeal dismissed Carden Mulholland's name suppression application but gave him until December 14 to apply for interim name suppression.

Both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court confirmed to Stuff no applications for further suppression had been filed.

Mulholland was the chief financial officer and is charged alongside former CBL Insurance chief executive Peter Alan Harris.

**READ MORE:

Peter Harris has denied the charges against him.

* CBL Insurance fraud accused loses suppression bid, but name remains secret for now

* CBL Insurance fraud accused keeps name secret over multimillion-dollar allegations

* Former CBL Insurance chief executive faces High Court trial over fraud charges

* Former CBL Insurance chief executive pleads not guilty to fraud charges

Mulholland faces charges of theft by a person in a special relationship, obtaining by deception and false accounting.

Both men have denied the charges and are set to go to trial at the High Court at Auckland in September 2021.

In November, at the Court of Appeal, David Jones QC argued his client and persons connected to him would suffer extreme hardship if named.

Covid-19 had increased that hardship, Jones said.

Brian Dickey, acting on behalf of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), opposed the application.

Justice Patricia Courtney, Justice Cameron Mander and Justice Mark Woolford dismissed the application but ordered the contents of the judgment to remain suppressed until the end of the trial.

CBL Corporation was put into liquidation by the High Court in November 2018 after going into voluntary administration.