She is the darling of the bureaucrats in Wellington, graciously suckling on the public tit and swift to collect a bauble for each compliment or wink of secrecy dispensed, and he is the recent mayoral candidate for Christchurch best known as a director of defunct companies and broken promises, recently living out of a vacant quake-damaged house he neither owns nor rents according to property records. They appear the perfect couple.
Suzanne Snively and Victor Cattermole (both pictured) - or Thomas Victor Henry Ronald Cattermole by some accounts – have joined up this year to form Vault Compliance Systems Limited, a New Zealand Limited company whose 100% shareholder is a recently formed Cayman Island shell company.
According to Mr Cattermole, VCS Ltd, formed in February with Ms Snively as Chairman of the Board, is already a global company with tens of millions in sales to multi-nationals in Australasia alone, with some companies paying $350,000 for their services. The phone number listed on the Vault website is to a company in Hong Kong identified as OFFSHORE INCORPORATIONS, 12th Floor, Ruttonjee House, 11 Duddell Street, Central, Hong Kong. At least one investor who paid $280,000 to Offshore Incorporations through her solicitor for Vault shares last year has received nothing. When asked about this investment, Mr Cattermole told kiwisfirst the investor in question forfeited the money because she failed to come up with an additional $220,000 as required by terms of the share offering.
Cattermole has run afoul with the Securities Commission at least twice in the past, resulting in his investment schemes being banned from promotion within New Zealand.
Cattermole’s girlfriend Olga Mora is listed as “Director of American Markets” on the Vault website. Reached by phone, Ms Mora quickly admitted the company had no North or South American operations but developed brain freeze on the question of what was being done in those markets. She suggested Victor would be better to answer such questions. Within minutes Cattermole phoned back. He was curious to know how the reporter obtained Ms Mora’s phone number.
Ms Snively, whose other schemes recently included running a fraudulent company “Transparency International New Zealand Limited” which offered consulting services to apply New Zealand’s “low corruption” techniques to “improve business profitability through lower cost of doing business in overseas countries, better access, lower cost of capital and for those listed companies, a higher yeilding (sic) share price.” is also chairperson of the New Zealand charitable chapter of the Berlin based non-profit Transparency International. The Berlin parent forced Ms Snively to stop trading on their name last December but refused to disclose their approach into her evident conflict of interest and profiteering, then claimed any disciplinary action lay with its local chapter. In a never released report, the New Zealand chapter found the charges against Ms Snively to be “false”, with a director expressing fear, if Ms Snively was booted out, the local chapter would lose government funding which last year provided nearly 90% of the chapter’s budget.
As Executive of Transparency International’s New Zealand chapter, Ms Snively implemented an on-line membership contract which requires potential members agree they will not seek to expose individual cases of corruption in New Zealand. In a ‘National Integrity Systems’ survey funded and partnered by the Office of the Auditor General last year, Transparency Intl New Zealand found the Office of the Auditor General was the most trusted and corruption free agency in New Zealand.
Transparency International’s “Corruption Perception Index” rated New Zealand top in perceived transparency and low corruption last year, an index which is publicised worldwide and brings in untold financial funding to the non-profit’s coffers. The World Justice Project in Washington DC and Forbes Magazine are two organisations which put a large emphasis on TI’s CPI in their own world rankings of least corrupt countries.
Ms Snively refused to answer any questions of her nascent New Zealand-to-Cayman Island-to-Hong Kong overnight success story. Mr Cattermole told kiwisfirst, “Everyone knows New Zealand is the top tax haven” for companies, thereby poo-pooing any suggestion the Cayman Island shell company shareholder and Hong Kong clearinghouse had anything to do with tax or regulatory avoidance. He claims VCS is currently doing business in 23 countries. He confirmed he lived in the vacant house at 178 Linwood, Christchurch, and said the registered owner is actually his ‘trustee’ who he is seeking to sue for $3 million in defamation as soon as his solicitors can find her to serve the claim. The 51 year old has more recently listed his mother’s house as his residence.
Related: Transparency.net.nz - Vault Compliance Systems- where is its registered office ? , New Zealand Justice Forum
