Cops order takeaway after Mongrel Mob president buys iconic fish and chips shop
Saturday, 7 April 2018
Police plan to place a very large takeaway order at a famous fish and chip shop purchased by a Mongrel Mob boss fighting a $1.2m assets seizure.
From MasterChef winners Kasey and Karena Bird to its eponymous meat pies, the Bay of Plenty township of Maketū has become the capital of Kiwi kai.
For the locals and tourists who visit the stunning seaside community, fish and chips from Unclez Maketū Takeaways has been the most popular meal in town for more than 40 years.
The business, Unclez Maketū Takeaways Ltd, was owned by local mobster William 'Willy' Nicholas.
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Owing more than $100,000 to the IRD in unpaid tax and penalties, William Nicholas put the business into liquidation, but not before he had sold it to his brother Valentine Nicholas, president of the town's Mongrel Mob chapter.
A new company, Maketū Takeaways Limited, was incorporated a few days after the sale in February with Valentine Nicholas as the sole director and shareholder.
The sale has attracted the attention of liquidators and police, who are trying to seize more than a million dollars worth of assets from Valentine Nicholas for what they say is the proceeds of his criminal offending.
Nicholas has been in a decade-long, protracted legal scrap with police. In 2015, he was found not guilty of money laundering at trial, after a jury couldn't decide his fate at a first trial. After being cleared of the criminal charges, he claimed he was the victim of a 'personal vendetta' outside court.
Using the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act, which has a lower legal threshold than criminal charges, police obtained a High Court order in 2016 to confiscate five properties owned by Nicholas and his partner Sheila Payne, including three adjoining waterfront properties in Maketū where Nicholas lives with his family, a 123ha forestry block, along with cash and motor vehicles.
Nicholas had argued that large sums of money in bank accounts were gambling winnings and that the police assessment of $1.2 million gained from criminal activity was wrong. He claimed four of the five properties confiscated were his whanau's ancestral land.
The Court of Appeal allowed Nicholas to challenge the High Court finding, arguing that the land is of cultural, spiritual and whanau significance to him. His mother is buried on one of the properties, as are the placenta of family members, he said.
Police believe the three properties owned by Nicholas along the Maketū waterfront – which include a gym, a workshop, a sauna, and recently hosted a children's birthday party complete with Spider Man-themed bouncy castle – are actually a gang headquarters.
A police spokesman said they were aware of the 'apparent acquisition' of Maketū Takeaways. They would look at 'all options' and 'any means' to retrieve the $1.2m they say Nicholas earned from from drug dealing.
Although the takeaway store was immortalised in a celebrated painting by Kiwi artist Robin White, Fish and chips, Maketu, liquidator Kim Thompson said they were unlikely to find much of value in the takeaways business.
'They'd be welcome to the two or three fridges that the business owns,' he said.
'This is not a goldmine. It's a fish and chip shop store in a small community. The community needs it and someone will run it.'
Thompson said he would be looking at whether the business had been sold at fair market value.
Dame Robin White's oil painting of the Maketu takeaway store, Fish and chips, Maketu is said to capture the simple charm of the local 'greasy'.
The painting was purchased by the Auckland Art Gallery in 1975, which describes it as having a 'quiet, unsentimental dignity and charm'.
Unpretentious suburban or small-town buildings, take pride of place in many of the Te Puke-born artist's New Zealand landscape paintings.