CBL Co-Defendant in OFS Case Named As Former CFO Carden Mulholland

Today a man facing fraud allegations can be named for the first time after the collapse of the $ 747 million insurance company CBL.

He is the former CFO of the company, Carden Mulholland.

The provisional removal of the 49-year-old man’s name expired at 3 p.m. today after both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals confirmed to the Herald that no further request had been made to extend the gag order.

Earlier this month, the Court of Appeal rejected Mulholland’s continued crackdown, the businessman’s third attempt at secrecy after previous failed bids in District Court and Superior Court.

However, the reasons for the courts’ decisions remain hidden until after the trial of Mulholland and former CBL CEO Peter Harris, which begins in September next year.

Both men were indicted by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) last December after an investigation began in June 2018, following the collapse of CBL in February of that year.

When the NZX-listed insurance company closed, it had a market value of $ 747 million.

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

Harris, 65, who was also a managing director of CBL Insurance and a managing director of CBL Corporation, faces five counts of theft by a person in a special relationship, two of obtaining through deception and false accounting.

He has never sought deletion of the name and has apparently embraced the criminal process.

“I welcome the opportunity to finally bring the larger picture of the CBL saga before the court,” he said.

Both men have denied all charges against them and are currently out on bail.

A bevy of civil proceedings are also running at the same time as the criminal case, including two class actions by CBL shareholders.

Also in Superior Court today, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers was seeking the blacking out of claims totaling potential hundreds of millions of dollars after being sued by the liquidators of CBL Insurance.

Both CBL Corporation and CBL Insurance were settled by the Superior Court in 2018.