1 Home Invasion (drugs)

This letter started it all off.

ARMSTRONG BARTON 4 December1984

The Treasurer

Riamaki Society Incorporated

RD 6

RAETIHI

ATTENTION: MR J CORNELIUS

Dear Sir

RIAMAKI INCORPORATED SOCIETY

We have been instructed to act on behalf of Mr J Van der Lubbe concerning his membership of the abovenamed Society.

We refer to various correspondences your Society has had with Mr Van der Lubbe and particularly letters dated the 8th of March 1983, 15th of March 1983 and the 8th of August 1983. In each of these letters you state that Mr Van der Lubbe is no longer a member of the above Society. It would appear that the Society's conclusion is based on the amendment to Rule 7 of the Society's Rules, that amendment having been registered in early March of 1983. Rule 7 now reads "subscriptions remaining unpaid on the 2nd day of May each year shall be deemed to be in arrears. If these arrears remain unpaid 3 months from the due date the member automatically ceases to be a member of the Society and his or her share moneys shall be paid out to them in the same manner as resigned members".

We note that on the 7th of March 1983 you wrote to Mr Van der Lubbe advising him of the date of the 6th Annual General Meeting of the above named Society. However on the 8th of March he received another letter stating that he was no longer a member. It is now clear that Mr Van der Lubbe's membership was withdrawn because his annual subscription for the years 1979 to 1980, 1980 to 1981, 1981 to 1982 and 1982 to 1983 remained unpaid. However the amendment to Rule 7 states that annual subscriptions remaining unpaid on the 2nd day of May each year shall be deemed to be in arrears. This amendment was not registered until early March 1983. Therefore, the subscriptions in issue relate to years prior to the amendment to Rule 7.

Your Society has therefore purported to retrospectively implement the amendment to Rule 7 without any authority to do so. There is no general right at law or any specific right in the amendment to Rule 7 to implement the somewhat draconian measures set out in that Rule on a retrospective basis.

Furthermore on the 15th of March 1983 Mr Van der Lubbe forwarded to the Secretary of the abovenamed Society the arrears requested and also an advance payment for the oncoming year. This cheque was not accepted. A further cheque was forwarded to the Secretary on the 1st of June 1983 and this cheque was also not accepted. However, your Secretary did state that the arrears still remained owing as a debt to the Society. If that is the case on what basis did you purport to advise Mr Van der Lubbe that he was no longer a member of your Society? The annual subscription fee for the oncoming year had not yet fallen due and therefore if arrears for the previous years remained an enforceable debt then clearly they were enforceable against a member. It is also to be noted that under the amendment to Rule 7 once the member ceased to be a member of the Society, his or her share moneys would be repaid to them in the same manner as resigned members. Mr Van der Lubbe has never received such a repayment. If in fact, in your view, Mr Van der Lubbe is not now a member of your Society, why has this money not been repaid?

Therefore, in our view your Society has acted quite improperly by purporting to prevent Mr Van der Lubbe from exercising his clear right of membership. Your Society's actions are wrong both in general law and one not permitted by the Rules of the Society. We finally refer to your letter of the 8th of August 1983 when in writing to Mr Van der Lubbe you suggest that he obtain further clarification of this matter from a Solicitor. Mr Van der Lubbe has obviously now done this and views with considerable anger the actions that your Society has taken against him. We further understand that there are several other people who have suffered the same fate as Mr Van der Lubbe. No doubt now Mr Van der Lubbe is, aware of the legal position, these people will also learn of your Society's improper actions and may also wish to take the appropriate measures. We look forward to your early reply to this letter and your recognition of Mr Van der Lubbe's continuing membership of the abovenamed Society.

Yours faithfully

ARMSTRONG BARTON

PER:

A F Cameron.

Every man's house is his castle. Legal Maxim.

"If one is willing to make allegations, one must also provide credible evidence to support them." Gordon Waugh.

The Riamaki Society Incorporated was formed by a group of people to control what could be described as a private Ohu, at the end of Croatons Road, Ruatiti Valley, Raetihi. All went well with this arrangement until Jerry Cornelius arrived on the scene. From that time until the winding up of the Society there was factional fighting (divide and rule) and illegal actions such as that described in the lawyer’s letter. Cornelius and the other remaining members of the society secretly wound up the Society and sold the assets, which included a one thousand-acre bush farm to Jerry Cornelius while the matter of my membership was before the Court. Cornelius paid me out my full share money out of his own pocket after I placed a Caveat on the Title to the farm. I was proved right and my lawyer, who is now a Judge, took all the money. Lesson number one.

Less than two weeks after the lawyer’s letter was sent to Cornelius (4/12/84) the Wanganui Drug Squad detective Colin Irvine, came a-knocking at my door. He told me that he wanted to search the property for illegal drugs.

"Principles are a mug's game." JVDL

After complaining about the legalised home invaders to that brick wall the Police Commissioner and his cronies, I was suffering from righteous indignation, I complained to the then last resort the Ombudsman. I have numbered his report and will comment on it where I thought it necessary.

1

1 No Police Reports or files were made available to me.

2 If it was true that Irvine ‘was told by the informant on a number of occasions over a week that [I] was involved in the distribution of hard drugs’ it indicates that the informant was desperate for the Police to take action. A person acting without malice or an agenda would go to the Police, give the information and let them get on with it, not go back several times to hound them into action. And why would they need to be hounded into action? Because I was unknown to Irvine and unknown in drug circles.

3 Shows that the informant associates with at least three hard druggies and or chemist shop burglars. The informant’s knowledge of what was stolen in the burglary shows that he didn’t just pluck his information from the newspaper, those details were not reported in the papers. It could also be that Irvine simply added the unreported details in order to obtain the search warrant/s for his fishing trip.

4 For the first three months of that year (1984) I was living 783 kilometres from Wanganui at Hihi Beach, Northland so Irvine’s statement is demonstrably false. He made up the whole of that paragraph to vilify my name to mislead the Ombudsman. It’s quite clear that he was sucked in by Irvine’s lies. When Sandra read what Irvine had told the Ombudsman she nearly spontaneously combusted. She shot straight into the Police Station and demanded that Irvine prove his malicious accusations but all she got for her efforts were some bruises on her arms when she was unceremoniously ejected from the premises.

5 The Police had no ‘reasonable grounds’ to obtain a search warrant and that was the first thing I told Irvine after he said that he had one. A single, persistent informer with no supporting or corroborating evidence are not the ‘reasonable grounds’ that are required.

4

6 ‘The file suggests’ is a bit thin. Irvine’s visit to my traffic cop brother Eric was to test the reliability of the ‘recent’ information, nothing else. He hadn’t received any other information ever. Eric told Irvine his information was bollocks but still he went ahead.

7 I was aware from the beginning of who the informant was.

On the night of the home invasion I said to Irvine "I know who’s done this, Jerry Cornelius." At that Irvine flinched and walked away without denying my allegation. Another Policeman piped up saying, "Well if you know him you must be guilty." I then showed Irvine the lawyer’s letter but he refused to read it. If you try to explain matters they either ignore you or they say, "Look I’m not here to argue with you" and then they barge on with their nefarious business. To that time I had met Cornelius just once and on that one occasion he volunteered to me that he had done time for burglary. Why did he do that? He was fishing to see if I was a criminal like him. I guess that if I had told Cornelius that I was a burglar like him the burglary squad would have invaded my home. He chose drugs (I did have long hair) and his gullible and corrupt mate Irvine.

8 The Ombudsman has omitted the fact that two warrants were issued. Irvine got the address all wrong on the first one, an address nowhere near my place. He went to that address armed with his bogus warrant and found that he had cocked-up. So much for his ‘reliable intelligence.’ Without a second thought, an alarm bell should have rung, he went back to the previously ‘satisfied judicial officer’ who granted him a second warrant. If a cop asks for a warrant he will get it, simple as that. No probing questions asked. All lies believed.

5