As per the announcement made by ‘The Securities Commission’, it has recently confirmed that it has laid criminal charges against Huljich Wealth Management including its former managing director Peter Huljich.

It is to be mentioned here that the charges that are being laid on the company and the MD fall under the Securities Act that carry a maximum penalty of three months in prison and a $300,000 as fine.

As per the announcement, the commission is of a view that Mr Huljich and Huljich Wealth Management misled prospective investors by misrepresenting the investment performance of the scheme’s funds in offer documents. It may be noted here that the offer document had graphs comparing the Huljich KiwiSaver Funds’ investment performance to other competitor KiwiSaver funds.

However, what the commission is saying that it failed to disclose that the Huljich performance figures included related party payments made at the direction of Mr Huljich. For the record, the MD resigned from the company in March.

The commission has said that the payments had a significant impact on the Huljich KiwiSaver Funds’ investment performance figures and hence misled investors to a large extent.