A Blenheim-based harness racing personality earned more than $1 million a year as a result of influencing or controlling grants from pokie gambling machine profits, the Crown alleges.
Horse trainer Michael Joseph O'Brien, 57, is accused of setting up a trust to operate pokie machines in pubs and clubs and being the unseen hand behind it, including controlling where gambling machine profits would be distributed.
The Crown says O'Brien's scheme was to invoice racing clubs for "lobbying" for grants on their behalf, and then arrange for the clubs to receive grants of about three times the amount he invoiced them.
It was alleged that, from 2006, O'Brien received "substantially more" than $1m per racing season through the invoicing scheme, totalling $11.5m by 2013. He did not face charges relating to the invoicing scheme.
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One racing club representative told the court he would rather not have paid O'Brien's invoices, but O'Brien was "really successful" in lobbying for funds for the club.
O'Brien and two others are on trial at the High Court in Wellington facing charges relating to the way O'Brien's involvement in a grant-making trust, and bars and cafes that contained pokie machines, was concealed.
The three have pleaded not guilty to all charges. Final addresses for all three were expected this week.
On Wednesday, prosecutor Grant Burston said that, through O'Brien's hidden interest in businesses where the pokie machines were placed, and the trust, he could sway the grants process. It depended, however, on being able to conceal his involvement from the Department of Internal Affairs, which regulated the industry, because O'Brien believed the department would not approve the licences if it knew he was involved.
There was evidence he had become frustrated with the difficulty of getting gambling money grants for racing clubs, which led to a decrease in his own income. From earning $1.74 million from the racing club invoices in 2007, his earnings dropped to $1.32 in the 2009 racing year.
In 2009 he decided to set up his own trust, Bluegrass, to operate the pokie machines in venues he acquired, and control the grants process, it was alleged. From there, racing club income to him or an associated party swung up, and reportedly reached a high of $1.92m in the 2012 racing year.
O'Brien has pleaded not guilty to five charges dating from between 2009 and 2013. At the start of the trial, the Crown laid 15 charges against defendants including O'Brien, but later a decision was made not to proceed on 10 of the charges, dating from 2007 to 2010.
O'Brien and a 56-year-old man whose name was suppressed faced two charges of obtaining an operator's licence for Bluegrass, and control over the proceeds of gambling, by falsely representing that O'Brien was not involved.
O'Brien and Paul Anthony Max, 60, face three charges relating to getting venue licences for three businesses in 2009 and 2010 by concealing O'Brien's involvement.
Max allegedly held O'Brien's interests in his name to conceal O'Brien's involvement.
O'Brien's ailing father, Patrick Francis O'Brien, 83, had been one of the defendants but, soon after the trial started on February 27, the judge removed him on health grounds. Patrick O'Brien was a former chairman of Harness Racing New Zealand.
The defendants begin their closing addresses to Justice Robert Dobson, sitting without a jury, on Thursday.
Reprinted with permission of stuff.co.nz