Gareth Vaughan

He reached out to me initially.

Not that long after he had been arrested in Singapore, he had clearly seen some of my stories.

I think one in particular where I wrote about his company.

So he was brought in as a WorldClear employee to try and help them open bank accounts, primarily in the US.

And that didn't succeed.

That didn't work because WorldClear was struggling to get banks or keep banks and then to get banks because it wanted to have bank accounts that it could move customers' money through.

Yes, yes.

So this was the premise, and they had been struggling to keep bank accounts, and then they were struggling to get new ones.

And so Richard was brought in, he's a guy with a background in sales, and he would cold call banks, particularly in the US, and try and line up accounts for WorldClear.

This didn't

So then David Hillary, who was the managing director of WorldClear, and Richard decided that Richard would establish a company in which he was the shareholder and director called T1 Holdings, and WorldClear would be able to use this company's bank accounts to move its money.

What was the reservations from banks then?

Look, I think there were a few.

So what Hillary said at the time was that WorldClear was classed as a remittance company under anti-money laundering rules.

And at that time, banks were very wary and concerned about the remittance sector, which is true.

I mean, the anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism law

took effect in New Zealand in 2013.

So if you're talking about sort of 2015, 2016, the earlier days of WorldClear, that law was still very new, bedding in, and, you know, a lot of genuine remittance companies that were simply sending money, say, from New Zealand's Pacifica community back to people in the South Pacific Islands were struggling to retain bank accounts.

So there was an element of that going on.

But also, I mean, WorldClear...