The bike shop, the Green MP, and alleged migrant exploitation

Friday, 15 March 2024

This story was first published in March 2024. It culminated in Tana leaving parliament on Tuesday.

**A Green Party MP has been stood down after Stuff questioned her links to a business accused of migrant exploitation. *Steve Kilgallon investigates.***

Tourists climbing the hill from Matiatia Wharf into Waiheke Island’s main town, Oneroa, pass a well-positioned e-bike sales and hire business.

On their return from Europe a decade ago, buying the business made sense to Danish-born automotive engineer Christian Hoff-Nielsen and his wife, corporate high-flier Darleen Tana.

Tana left the business a few years ago to pursue a political career, but that’s now in the balance after allegations she was involved in migrant exploitation at that very shop on Oceanview Dr.

The Greens suspended Tana on March 14 and hired an independent lawyer to investigate after Stuff told them of claims by a former employee of her husband’s business.

Got a tip for us to investigate? Email us securely at** investigations@stuff.co.nz**

Santiago Latour Palma says he’s owed over $25,000 by his former boss Christian Hoff-Nielsen - and for most of that time, was working illegally on a tourist visa.

He says wages were often late and went unpaid, and he raised this twice with Tana, who refused to get involved, despite Tana asking him for IT support for her political campaign.

He claims Tana, who transferred her share of the business to Hoff-Nielsen in 2019 and stood down as a director, also oversaw the first day of his work trial at the Waiheke Island branch of Bikes and Beyond. He says he told Tana then that he was on a tourist visa, and she told him not to worry because he would be paid in cash.

Palma has lodged an Employment Relations Authority (ERA) claim against Bikes and Beyond and Hoff-Nielsen, making claims for unpaid wages, lost wages, unpaid holiday pay and asking for penalties against the company and, potentially, Hoff-Nielsen himself.

Stuff understands a second former worker, another migrant, has also lodged an ERA claim against the business.

Palma’s advocate, Nathan Santesso, said he would call Tana as a witness if the case made it to a full ERA hearing.

Hoff-Nielsen said he would defend the claim, denied owing Palma any money and accused him of trying to leverage Tana’s political position to force him into settling the claim.

He said that for the months Palma claimed he was working illegally, they were in fact just friends who exchanged business ideas.

But when Stuff approached Tana for comment, a Green Party staffer said he would handle enquiries. He later supplied a statement from Green co-leaders Marama Davidson and Chloe Swarbrick in which they said the Green Party had “long campaigned to ensure everyone who wants to make their home here is treated with fairness and compassion”.

They said Tana had told the party on February 1 and then again on February 9 that ERA complaints had been lodged which contained allegations against her personally. She was stood down from her portfolio as Small Business spokesperson but the Greens did not make any comment because they did not want to influence the mediation process.

They said it wasn’t until March 14 - when Stuff made enquiries - that they learned Tana “may have had some prior knowledge of the allegations”.

“Green MPs are expected to maintain high standards of public and private behaviour. To understand fully what Ms Tana knew, and when, we are appointing an independent lawyer to conduct an investigation into the matter. Ms Tana will stand aside from all Caucus and Parliamentary responsibilities until the matter is resolved.”

Welcome to the island

Palma met Hoff-Nielsen when visiting Waiheke Island with his girlfriend as part of a planned holiday before a year’s working holiday in Australia when he hired a bike from Bikes and Beyond.

He claims Hoff-Nielsen ended up offering him a job working on the store’s marketing, with a work trial paid in cash at $24 an hour, then a salaried job at $33 an hour with help to secure a visa and potentially residency.

The next day, Palma turned up to do a work trial. He says Hoff-Nielsen wasn’t there - but Tana was, and because he was late, tried to dismiss him on the spot. Hoff-Nielsen resolved the situation, he says. Palma says he told Tana he was on a tourist visa, and says she told him not to worry as it was cash work.

He says Hoff-Nielsen then told him he would submit his visa paperwork, but he had to start work immediately, that this was lawful, and if he did not, the job would go to someone else.

Palma agreed. “He told me if I like your skills, I can quickly give you a visa … but he told me the position is now, if you leave and do your trip, the opportunity is gone.”

The first fortnight, Palma says he worked seven days a week, for a total of 99.25 hours and was paid $2,382 in cash. But the following week, Hoff-Nielsen was late paying his wages, a pattern that continued until he was owed a substantial sum.

He says he tried to raise the issue with Tana, but she cut him off mid-sentence, saying she would not get involved.

Palma claims she later asked him to do some IT work on her political campaign and he says he helped in the hope she would intercede in the pay dispute, but she declined.

Hoff-Nielsen said it was “total nonsense” that Palma helped Tana because “his English wouldn’t be good enough to help her on the campaign”.

Palma, however, has supplied messages between him and Tana in which she asked him for advice on “socials” and IT assistance.

He says Tana was present at the Waiheke store much more than Hoff-Nielsen, he witnessed her paying employees in cash, and when Hoff-Nielsen went on an extended holiday, she oversaw operations.

“I spoke to Darleen about it… she knows the whole situation. When I speak with her, she says she has nothing in common with the business … but in Waiheke, she is in the business. She knows I am not getting paid.”

Santesso said: “It is really disappointing that he went to a Green Party member of Parliament and asked ‘can you help me get my minimum entitlements’ … and she didn’t help him. Even if it is true she is not involved, as a Member of Parliament, you ought to try to do something … they should be standing up for people like this.”

Palma says he worked public holidays with no extra pay, and never received any explanation of how Hoff-Nielsen was calculating his pay.

In June 2023, when the alleged debt stood at $7,000, and Palma had sold his van and laptop to make ends meet, he claims he confronted Hoff-Nielsen, who said he was struggling to pay rent and bills due to Covid, poor cashflow and thefts, but offered him the use of his work van so Palma could supplement his income with cleaning jobs.

Palma says Hoff-Nielsen later told him this work was illegal, and if they ever fell out, he would report him to Immigration; he then stopped doing cleaning work. “I am trapped with him,” Palma says. “I have no other options and I need money to eat. I am ashamed of that, but I am trapped because I trusted him.”

He has shown Stuff a WhatsApp group where multiple employees complained about late payments from Hoff-Nielsen, some while Hoff-Nielsen was enjoying a six-week European vacation with his children.

Hoff-Nielsen accepted he had paid wages late, saying the business came close to closing down last year after $60,000-worth of bikes were stolen (“it absolutely annihilated our business”) but he said he had repaid everyone.

He also denied owing Palma any money at all. He denied paying in cash, denied any involvement in the business from Tana and denied Palma had worked illegally. He said that in the first ten months they were simply friends.

“In between him drinking beer with me and having lots of talk about ice-cream … we did discuss business both of us, both ways, I am an MBA student, so as much as he helped me, I helped him.” He said they were “exchanging notes on how to acquire customers” and it was “more a meeting of minds”. He said the job offer came later when “it transpired it was more than a meeting of minds”.

He claimed Palma was “using the position my wife is now in to make it seem somehow that something is owed, so he can create a bit of a stir and you’ve jumped on that, that’s your job”.

“But there isn’t more to this than him having had a friendship, which at one time we decided is not really a friendship that was real.” He said that it was now “not a friendship”.

However, a YouTube video posted by a Bikes and Beyond customer, and reposted on Bikes and Beyond’s Facebook page in October 2022 shows Palma hiring an e-scooter to a couple of tourists, and saying “this is my third day working here, but it is awesome”.

In June 2023, Palma finally received his visa and he says Hoff-Nielsen began paying him into his account. But he says the amounts were irregular and Palma says he did not receive holiday pay or payslips. Palma’s visa said he must be paid a minimum hourly rate of $33, but his employment agreement said he would have a salary of $60,000, which he worked out to be $29 an hour.

In late August 2023, Palma’s mother’s home in Argentina was broken into. She was tied up and beaten by the burglars. He flew home to care for her, and not knowing he was entitled to holiday pay, he offered to work for free while in Argentina if Hoff-Nielsen paid off about $700 per week of arrears to cover his rent. However, he says he received no salary while he was away. “I understood later he needs to pay salary for my vacations, and I feel like an idiot because I didn’t understand that.”

In October, Palma raised a complaint first with the Labour Inspectorate, and then the ERA. Hoff-Nielsen responded by offering an immediate payment of $3,000 and the rest when Palma came back to New Zealand.

After that money was paid, Palma came back and the pair met at Hoff-Nielsen’s store in Newmarket, central Auckland.

Palma says Hoff-Nielsen wrote down what he should tell his lawyers: “I retract all I have said; I have no case for Ecycle NZ; I will start work from x with no outstanding issues.”

Hoff-Nielsen denied the existence of the document, saying: “There is no document … I would ask him to somehow prove that originated with us”, and said Palma’s recollection of the meeting was “nonsense”.

Palma supplied a recording of the meeting, in which a man tells him he can “pay you all that is due” but says Palma needs to withdraw his claim. “You need to say I did not mean this, I start afresh, the file is closed.” When Palma asks about his wages, he says: “I never said no. I said I don’t have it, and you know I don’t have it.” Earlier in the conversation, he says: “We have a lot of money now.” The man then slowly reads out the words that appear on the document Palma provided a copy of.

Palma says he declined to sign, and was given 24 hours to make a decision. Instead, he applied for a Migrant Exploitation Protection Visa (MEPV). He hasn’t heard from Hoff-Nielsen since, including when his advocate, Santesso, asked for his wage and time records.

A statement of problem filed to the ERA claims Palma is owed $4,000 in wages, $6,137.7 in annual leave, and $14,989 in lost wages, plus legal costs. It asks for an additional payment of $15,000 for stress and humiliation, and penalties against the company and a declaration that Hoff-Nielsen was involved in those breaches.

“In the beginning, I didn’t want to fight with him, I wanted to turn the page … and find another job,” Palma says, but Hoff-Nielsen’s attitude had driven him to take the case further.

Palma says his partner had to pause her English language studies and take a job as a hotel housekeeper to help them survive. He had been told he was ineligible for help from WINZ, but had waited nearly four months for his MEPV, during which he could not work.

Santesso said he had called Tana but she had told him she was not involved. He’d also tried to negotiate with Hoff-Nielsen without success.

He said the next step would be ERA-mandated mediation.

Hoff-Nielsen said he had no intention of settling the case. “There is a whole heap of things he needs to substantiate: I can say the clouds are yellow and it is snowing in Waiheke, until I show the snowflake, I can’t really do much,” Hoff-Nielsen said. “His stories are not at all like how we operate.”

Hoff-Nielsen said he’d never had a case like this before. Bikes and Beyond has lost two previous employment disputes. He said that was because he was too busy to engage legal counsel, had considered the claims without merit, and the amounts involved weren’t worth appealing to the Employment Court.

He was personally ordered to pay Charles ‘Chuck’ Simpson $6,153 in missing wages after the ERA found that Simpson had worked for Hoff-Nielsen while engaged in failed negotiations to take over his Blenheim store. The ERA found Simpson wasn’t constructively dismissed, did find he was owed wages.

Bikes and Beyond was also ordered to pay former staff member Nick Scott $7.962.50 in lost wages and $15,000 in compensation for humiliation, loss of dignity, and injury to his feelings - and then a subsequent costs order of $6,500. Hoff-Nielsen had sought to have the case re-opened, claiming a miscarriage of justice, but the ERA declined.

Hoff-Nielsen, a Danish-born automotive engineer whose CV includes work on Jaguar cars, met Tana in Belgium, where she studied for an MBA and worked as a business analyst in corporate telecommunications. They moved to Waiheke Island in 2013 with their four children, and bought out a local cycle hire business. Tana told one reporter in 2020: 'It was a watershed moment. We saw the business model straight away, we could see the potential. We talked to him on a Friday and bought it on Monday.'

Shifting into e-bikes, the couple grew the business to fie stores.

Tana was a director of Bikes and Beyond from January 2015 until April 2019, when she transferred her shareholding to Hoff-Nielsen.

She was also a director of the Bikes U Like Ltd, which was removed from the companies register last November.

Elected to Parliament on the Green Party list at the last election, Tana ran as their Northland electorate candidate in 2020 and Tamaki Makaurau in 2023 and was the party’s spokesperson for media, fisheries, internal affairs and small business.