The banned businessman and the relentless private investigator

Saturday, 21 November 2020

Ben Yeatman pulls out his New Zealand passport and flashes open the front page. Then he pulls out another one in a different name. Then he produces a driver’s licence in a third name. All are current, and all are legal, he says.

Yeatman is something of a chameleon, he’s swapped one identity for another as he tries to outrun a past that has seen him bankrupted twice, connected to more than a dozen liquidated firms, and banned from running a company until 2023.

He says he maintains different identities so he can “transact property and other securities in a very opaque manner”. He also says he’s a citizen of three countries.

For the past two years, while disqualified from being a company director, Yeatman has been the “managing partner” of an electrical, plumbing and mechanical services contractor, Yeatmans Group, which has undertaken electrical fitouts in several Auckland schools, and a new hotel in central Auckland.

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He admits to exploiting a loophole that allows sole traders to operate through family trusts, and had been doing so for two years without anybody cottoning on to his true identity.

But his attempt at a clean break from the past came to an abrupt end when a contractor who claims he is owed $86,000 by Yeatman started looking into his background.

Anton Buenavantura, a director of Triple Eight construction, says he was trying to recover money owed to him by Yeatman, who he knows as Brendon, and tried to look him up through the Companies Office.

Yeatman disputes that he owes Buenaventura money.

When he couldn’t find any trace, Buenaventura hired private investigator Nick Mayer, who discovered Yeatman’s multiple identities and business backstory.

In a series of text messages and emails, Mayer sought payment of the debt on behalf of Buenavantura. When it was not forthcoming he began contacting Yeatman’s suppliers, employees, schools where he had worked, and the developers behind a new hotel in central Auckland informing them of his discoveries about Yeatman’s multiple aliases.

Mayer also discovered Yeatman had hired Sam Lam, a former heroin smuggler with Triad links who tried unsuccessfully to open a brothel on Auckland’s North Shore, to work at the hotel development.

Mayer then began writing to owners of neighbouring apartment buildings, raising concerns about what Lam may have been up to while on site.

“Not a good look for the Hotel or your Body Corp members. Perhaps Sam Lam had an interest in the Hotel to use it as a brothel,” Mayer, director of NZ Private Investigators, told one body corp.

Mayer's allegations that electrical work at the new hotel was non-compliant resulted in the developers undertaking a thorough investigation into the electrical fitout.

They spoke to the Auckland Council, took affidavits from the electricians who carried out the work, and are understood to be completely confident that the work is safe, and carried out to a high professional standard. It's understood the allegations have pushed back the opening of the new hotel, and that they are pursuing legal action against Mayer as a result.

Mayer has laid complaints with police, the Companies Office, who are looking into Yeatman’s activities, and the Financial Markets Authority, who declined to investigate.

However, Ben Yeatman believes that Mayer is conducting a vendetta against him, and has laid complaints against Mayer with the police and the Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority, which regulates PIs.

Yeatman claims he has done everything by the book, hiring qualified tradespeople to carry out the electrical and plumbing work.

“I’m an ex-bankrupt, banned director running a business in Auckland. Of course I have to pay my bills. I’m not doing anything wrong.”

Yeatman claims the fallout from Mayer’s enquiries has cost him the business and destroyed him.

“The reason I'm being completely forthright with you is because I have absolutely nothing to lose. I'm absolutely and utterly screwed.”

‘People would describe me as being self-entitled, morally superior, arrogant’

Ben Yeatman wants to meet on the floor of SkyCity casino. It's 9:30am on a weekday morning, and Yeatman orders a spiced tomato juice. He says he doesn't gamble, well only sometimes.

He prefers to have a wine and watch others fritter away their money. He tells a story of watching a man who plays three $100 roulette wheels at the same time. He's sunburnt, having spent 90 minutes the previous afternoon on the phone to Stuff outside his Te Kuiti home, candidly offering his explanations for all of the claims being made about him.

“Obviously there are elements of truth in a lot of the allegations that Nick is circulating. There's also an enormous amount of inaccuracy.”

Yeatman has come to bearing pages and pages of documents, his two passports and a driver’s licence. He pulls out bank accounts, emails, credit applications, contracts. He wants to dispel accusations that he’s been operating illegally.

Yeatman was born Charles Benjamin Rupert Macadie in Paddington, Australia. He says he didn’t get on with his father so took his mother’s maiden name, Hanssen.

His own take on his early years is a tale of a privileged but disjointed upbringing. He moved to New Zealand as a toddler, parents broke up when he was around 11. He attended the private Kristin School in Albany, where fees cost as much as $23,000.

He got into medical school at Otago University, but dropped out in his first year after discovering he didn’t have the stomach for dissection.

Even as a scarfie he was trying to live a life that he thought he was entitled to but couldn’t afford, and racked up thousands of dollars on credit cards and on tick at department stores.

When the debt reached around $15,000, he says he was frogmarched into the office of the Official Assignee in Christchurch by his parents, and declared himself bankrupt.

Yeatman says he breached his bankruptcy conditions “many times”, and wound up spending several months in Paparua Prison, now known as Christchurch Men’s, for that and other dishonesty offences.

“It was horrific,” Yeatman says of his prison stretch.

“I read a lot of books and shut myself away. I didn’t have a shower for a month. It was f…ing scary.”

Rather than serve as a wake-up call, Yeatman says he doubled-down on his free-spending lifestyle and disdain for societal and legal norms.

“It didn’t change my behaviour. I’m not entirely sure why. People would describe me as being self-entitled, morally superior, arrogant. I just put it down to it not being my fault, and I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I carried on.”

As Benjamin Charles Hanssen, he was bankrupted for a second time in 2002. A Companies Office search shows more than a dozen companies connected to him were placed into liquidation.

He met his partner of the past 20 years Kerry Yeatman, previously known as Kerry Thompson, and they invested in hospitality and property around the South Island, and became involved in a proposed $5 million redevelopment of a downtown Greymouth hotel precinct, which never eventuated.

They bought distressed assets, including two bars in Dunedin, from South Canterbury Finance.

“It was in deep financial trouble by this stage,” he says of the Timaru-based finance company formerly run by the Allan Hubbard.

He came to the attention of local media when the businesses began to fail, leaving out of pocket creditors all over the South Island, and stories of his unconventional business practices emerged.

“I've been in the vice industry, I've been in the liquor industry and I've been in the construction industry. I've picked up a number of acquaintances over the years and yes, I've not been above using gang members to intimidate people in the past.”

Gang members in his employ reportedly tipped concrete down the drains of rival business owners.

As his property and bar empire began to unravel, he says he was targeted by a homophobic social media abuse campaign.

Somebody created a chart showing all of his property and business interests and lending arrangements.

“And at that point I discovered of course that anything that I have through a company or under my name is relatively easily found if you want to pay to do it. So with no fanfare whatsoever, I changed my name, which means that now when I convey property … I can own property or shares or anything else that I want to in my legal name, which is Chris Swann, and unless you know what you're looking for, there is no way of finding it.”

In 2015, Ben Yeatman and Kerry, then known as Kerry Thompson, were banned from operating a company for eight years.

Yeatman says he had a breakdown, and retreated to a property he owns in the Bay of Islands.

“I just sat and drank wine until I couldn't remember anything any longer, swam and went fishing. That was my way of dealing with the problem.”

During that period he and Kerry and set up an online business importing LED light fittings and selling them through Trademe.

Then he set up Yeatmans Group and began tendering for plumbing and electrical contracts around Auckland.

Yeatman said part of his business involved carrying out inspections on schools who part of their 10-year property plans.

He did many of the assessments himself, particularly the complex ones.

“You don't need to be a registered plumber to provide an assessment. I wasn't asked to do it as a registered plumber. I was asked to provide an assessment of whether or not the buildings meet the code and I can point to every single aspect of the code when I say something's not wrong. I have a very good knowledge of the plumbing code. I run a plumbing business.”

Yeatman says they completed two contracts at Sir Keith Park School and Kelston Boys High School. Both schools were contacted by Nick Mayer, who alleged Yeatman had carried out electrical work without the proper certifications, a claim Yeatman denies.

The Ministry of Education's Head of Education Infrastructure Services, Kim Shannon, said the projects were managed by the schools’ Boards of Trustees.

“We are not aware of any current concerns of this nature at either school, but are available to provide support as needed.”

Yeatmans Group had a staff of about 35 prior to Covid-19, and during the first lockdown Yeatman claimed the wage subsidy for all of them through his family trust.

“There is nothing fraudulent in what we’ve applied for. It’s a matter of public record. I’m no choirboy, but I’m nothing if not meticulous.”

Yeatman says he has hired more than a dozen staff through Ministry of Social Development work programmes, many of whom come from difficult backgrounds.

He tries to give them a second chance where other doors may have closed.

“I actually try very, very hard to help people to get back to where they want to be.”

Among them is Sam Lam, who was jailed in 1998 for attempting to traffic a record quantity of heroin. He says he was fully aware of Lam’s background, and he’s had no problem in the month that Lam worked for him.

As a result of the fallout from his dispute, he has had to let all of his staff go, and as of Friday, no longer has any staff on the books.

Yeatman freely admits to using aliases to get around the long shadow of his past business dealings.

“I did it for very, very prosaic reasons, there was nothing in it that wasn’t thought through and carefully executed.”

He gets annoyed when asked what people should call him.

“I'm just Ben Yeatman. The reason for that is if you Google Ben Hanssen you immediately come up with a whole lot of backstory, some of which is true, some of which isn't true. I live in a small community. I'm known as Ben Yeatman. Everyone knows me as Ben Yeatman.”

When asked if he thinks he’s dishonest, he concurs. “I think all human beings are dishonest. I think all human beings are also deeply, deeply, deeply hypocritical. I think that we all do dishonest things all the time and I have been more dishonest than most.”

Pete Seufatu, National Manager Criminal Proceeds, Integrity and Enforcement. said MBIE’s Integrity and Enforcement Team (IET) had received a referral regarding Kerry Thompson, Benjamin Hanssen and The Yeatmans Group.

“The matter is currently under assessment and, in line with our other investigations, MBIE does not comment on the status of IET’s investigations, as this could prejudice ongoing enquiries.”

The Yeatmans complaint about Mayer with the Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority will be held through a telephone conference on December 1.