The transaction that would bring down Sir Ngatata Love went undetected for years, until the Inland Revenue began looking into his partner's accountants.

Sitting in the witness box of the High Court at Wellington in May 2012, already showing signs of illness, Lorraine Skiffington told the court she was "Sir Ngatata Love's partner".

But that wasn't why she was there, and surely, Skiffington may have already known trouble was coming.

CRAIG SIMCOX / FAIRFAX NZ David Ingram Rowley, left, and Barrie David Skinner, during sentencing in the High Court. During the trial the pair's lawyer put it to Sir Ngatata Love's partner that a payment through her company into their personal account was a secret commission, designed to be concealed from the Wellington Tenths Trust.

She was appearing as a witness in the tax fraud trial of two Wellington accountants, Barrie James Skinner and David Ingram Rowley, who had operated as Tax Planning Services (TPS).

As a result of the trial, the pair were handed the longest ever jail terms for tax fraud in New Zealand history, eight and a half and eight years respectively.

READ MORE:

* Professor Sir Ngatata Love, leading academic and treaty negotiator, on trial for defrauding his iwi

* Sir Ngatata had 'sense of entitlement' to $1.5 million paid by developer: witness

* Sir Ngatata Love's lawyer says agreement had no financial impact on Tenths Trust

* Sir Ngatata Love's partner told banker 'lump sum' was coming

* Trustee had 'no knowledge' of payment to Sir Ngatata Love's partner's company

* Sir Ngatata Love says beachfront house not linked to development and belonged to his partner

* Sir Ngatata Love did not tell trustees his partner was consultant to developer

* Sir Ngatata Love claims partner was wrongly claiming to represent him to developers

* Sir Ngatata Love used partner's company to obtain $1.5m payment meant for trust, Crown claims

* Sir Ngatata Love trial portrays him as criminal fraud, or duped friend

* Sir Ngatata Love should lose knighthood - Tenths Trust beneficiary call

&PDCOPI Sir Ngatata Love hongis with Loizos Michaels, a con man who was later jailed for eight years.

While a number of the firm's clients appear to have received legitimate accounting services, others – including Skiffington – were drawn into an Inland Revenue investigation of Skinner and Rowley's "aggressive" tax avoidance schemes.

Put simply, clients paid invoices into a series of entities controlled by the pair for non-existent "services" and the money was returned, less a cut.

STUFF The house, at 12 Moana Rd in Plimmerton, which the Crown says Love and Skiffington purchased knowing a payment from Redwood was coming.

In return for avoiding the risk of prosecution (Justice Stephen Kos said many of the clients must have known the work of Skinner and Rowley was illegal) for filing incorrect tax returns, the clients were appearing as witnesses.

One used his phone to record Skinner coaching him on how to answer IRD questions.

Skiffington, a former student of – and then an adviser to – former Labour MP and party president Margaret Wilson, told the High Court the work the tax pair did played out like a work of fiction.

SUPPLIED During a High Court trial of two Wellington accountants in 2012, Lorraine Skiffington denied that a payment from a developer into her company was a secret commission designed to be kept secret from the Wellington Tenths Trust.

She was in an invidious position though, because her choice of accountancy firm was not the only thing which could come under scrutiny.

A large chunk of the money she had paid through TPS had come from a developer, Redwood, which was developing land owned by the Wellington Tenths Trust, which Love chaired.

When it came to cross-examination, Skinner and Rowley's lawyer, Mike Lennard, dropped a bombshell, raising the issue of a $1.02 million payment into a personal account she shared with Love.

Ross Giblin Sir Ngatata Love appears in the High Court at the start of his trial on fraud charges, just minutes after suppression which had prevented the charges being revealed was lifted after more than three years.

The payment had gone through a confusing money-go-round. Starting with Redwood, the money was paid into a company in which Skiffington was a shareholder, into her new mortgage with Love, back into her company, then in four payments to entities controlled by Skinner and Rowley.

On the same day, in January 2007, two payments went from TPS into the joint personal account of Skiffington and Love.

What was not revealed then, but became clear later, was that the money went directly into paying down the mortgage of a huge beachfront home in Plimmerton that Love and Skiffington had jointly bought just weeks earlier, with $1.8m of entirely borrowed money.

Lennard put it to Skiffington that the payment was a secret commission designed to be concealed from anyone associated with the Wellington Tenths Trust.

"Absolutely not," Skiffington replied.

Although it was not directly relevant to the case, Justice Kos gave an extensive account of the exchange in his verdict on Skinner and Rowley, describing Skiffington's account of what she did to earn the money as "vague".

Kos, who has now risen to be president of the Court of Appeal, signed off with classic understatement: "That is not a matter I need to resolve."

Within weeks of the judgement being released, Love had stood down as chairman of the Wellington Tenths Trust, the start of a monumental fall from grace.

Shortly afterwards the Serious Fraud Office confirmed it had launched an investigation.

More than four years later, the matter is only now being resolved.

The payment was made to Skiffington in return for Love granting the developer a lease to build on prime real estate a short walk from Parliament, over the fence from the Pipitea Marae. On Thursday Justice Lang found the payment was obtained by fraudulent means and the 78-year-old Love guilty of obtaining property by deception.

Love, as chairman of the Wellington Tenths, not only failed to tell his trustees of the payment, or his partner's involvement, but he took steps to try to keep the agreement secret.

And it may have stayed secret, ironically, if the first fraud had not been followed by a second one – the use of Skinner and Rowley in a bid to avoid paying tax.

It is entirely possible that, had Love and Skiffington used a legitimate accountant, they would have got away with the whole thing.

Pipitea St was not the only deal the pair tried

The trial of Sir Ngatata Love through August focused almost exclusively on the single payment linked to a development in Pipitea St, near Parliament.

But it was not the only time that Skiffington had been put forward as an agent of Love.

In 2008, movie mogul Sir Peter Jackson wrote a deferential letter to Love, in anticipation of the Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust being granted ownership of the land and derelict buildings at Shelly Bay.

Already an international figure, Jackson wrote that he would be "honoured" to personally discuss Shelly Bay, which he thought was an ideal spot for a state-of-the-art exhibition centre that could be home to his Lord of the Rings props.

But instead of a meeting, Jackson's spokesman received in reply from Skiffington a request, for her company to be paid $750,000 to do groundwork, for a deal to be reached. Skiffington wanted $250,000 upfront.

Jackson was offended and the deal was off. More than eight years later, the buildings at Shelly Bay continue to rot.

Later Sir Ngatata became tied up with notorious con man Loizos Michaels, who claimed to be fronting a group wanting to develop a casino in Wellington.

The Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust had acquired the right to buy the railway station building in 2009, and by January 10, Love wrote that he was prepared to sign a sale and purchase agreement, in return for Skiffington being granted a services agreement worth tens of millions of dollars.

"This agreement has my full support as chairman of the Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust."

While those attempts both came to nothing, in 2007 Love did manage to arrange for Wellington City Council to pay Skiffington's company more than $170,000 to help resolve a bitter property dispute, at a time she was working for developers seeking to build on the same site.

Documents show that the council was charged for Skiffington to attend dozens of meetings with members of the Tenths Trust, as well as the owners of the land.

During its investigation into the Tenths Trust, the Serious Fraud Office found only passing reference to Skiffington in any meeting minutes, in relation to fisheries activities.

Charges brought an end to the publicity

While the Serious Fraud Office is believed to have quickly gained access to the same documents as those obtained by The Dominion Post when the transactions were publicly aired in late 2012, it was months before charges were laid.

When they were, in June 2013, the publicity surrounding the case was silenced, with a wide-ranging suppression order.

Not only could it not be reported that Love and Skiffington were facing a raft of charges in relation to a series of transactions, no mention could be made of the role of Sir Ngatata's son, Matene Love, a former Junior All Black, accused of accepting a secret commission.

Matene Love was paid in return for an agreement that the Tenths effectively give Redwood a right of first refusal over the land in Pipitea St.

He pleaded guilty and served home detention, but the matter remained secret.

After a series of hearings, delays and Skiffington being granted a permanent stay of prosecution because of her ill health, Ralph Heberley Ngatata Love, a knight, emeritus professor and doctor, stood up in the High Court at Wellington on August 3, to plead not guilty to two fraud charges.

Even then details of Love's health, which nearly meant he escaped prosecution altogether, were suppressed.

Though his dementia formed a potentially key aspect of his defence, Justice Graham Lang acquiesced to Catherine Love's plea that it should remain secret until the verdict, as the family was unaware.

Day after day, Love's supporters sat listening in the public gallery, even on the days on which the defendant himself – suffering from a heart condition – was not in the court.

In an unlikely coincidence, Rowley – one of the accountants on whom Skiffington was in court back in 2012 testifying – was granted parole midway through the trial.

The Crown alleged that Love had used his position to arrange for Skiffington to be paid the upfront fee he knew a developer was willing to hand over to secure a lease on the land.

Love's defence had a number of avenues.

There was also the issue of whether the Tenths Trust actually missed out on the deal, with Love's lawyer arguing they got exactly what they paid for.

The trustees wanted a deal which would see them exposed to no risk, and that is exactly what happened.

Love also argued that he had not "obtained property", as the money which was the subject of the payment went to a company belonging to Skiffington, not to him.

While the payment may indeed have been made, there was no solid proof that he knew about it.

It was Redwood's agreement with Skiffington's company, and what her company did with the money was nothing to do with him.

As other witnesses testified, Skiffington was wont to claim she was speaking on Sir Ngatata's behalf, even before the Redwood transaction.

Love also argued that in many cases he simply signed documents which were put before him, without question, an extraordinary claim by a man who was at the time a Professor of Business Studies.

This flowed into another claim, that he had never intended to be an owner of the property – appearing on the documents was simply a favour for a friend.

The fact that they were friends was laboured by Love and his lawyer, with the defendant questioning the use of the term "partner", not knowing that it was her own words that had appeared to legitimise the relationship.

Verdict came within days

But when both sides had finished summing up, Justice Lang made a telling announcement: the verdict would be read less than a week later.

Whatever he had taken from three weeks of hearings, the short period suggested his mind was made up.

Neither Love's trial nor that of Skinner and Rowley took place in courtroom one, aside from the culmination.

The result was the same, the only difference being that Love was not required to stand in the dock.

Within seconds of Justice Lang arriving, Love was asked to stand, and was told he had been found guilty. The verdict dismissed every key plank of Love's defence, and appeared to take swipes at others.

Love's mental condition was not of great importance as Justice Lang found he was "firm in his denial of the key aspects of the Crown's case". While he could not remember details of what had happened, he seemed clear on what he didn't do.

He also found Love's account of the house not being his "difficult to believe".

While Justice Lang ordered that a pre-sentencing report for Love should consider suitability for home detention, he did so "without any hint as to what the sentence might be", suggesting it is possible the former Maori leader could be jailed.