Liquidators PWC have accepted claims totalling $59.1 million from customers of failed online payment platform NF Global Ltd, with cash recoveries so far of a little over three million dollars. Auckland-based NF Global director Claude Oberto is facing legal claims for the shortfall. Liquidators allege multiple breaches of Companies Act duties owed company creditors by Oberto, including reckless trading and failing to keep proper records. He admits to accounting chicanery, designed to deceive banking regulators.
With Mr Oberto subsequently claiming NF Global had no creditors, merely acting as a trustee holding funds on behalf of customers, PWC have added a further legal claim against Mr Oberto: failure to comply with Trusts Act rules governing use of trust funds.
All these claims have yet to be heard.
NF Global Ltd promised customers an efficient online platform for transferring funds internationally coupled with an ability to handle currency conversions.
Liquidators are chasing around the world to find Global assets, learning some Global subsidiaries are themselves being wound up insolvent in other jurisdictions.
In preliminary legal jousting, Mr Oberto asked that liquidators’ claims be split into two separate hearings: first to decide the legal relationship between NF Global and its customers; second to decide the extent of his personal liability, if any.
Having two separate trials will delay markedly any final resolution. The cumulative effect of waiting a trial date for the first issue, awaiting a court ruling following this trial, then awaiting a court date for any necessary second personal liability trial, and then a further period after this trial before a ruling on liability is handed down, would stretch into infinity in the eyes of unpaid Global NF customers.
In the High Court, Associate Judge Brittain ruled against any split trial; both hearings would cover much the same facts, he said. Having two separate hearings would waste time; evidence for any subsequent liability hearing duplicating the first.
Mr Oberto’s split trial application was without merit, Judge Brittain said, ordering Mr Oberto pay increased costs to PWC for failing to act reasonably.
As part of its argument against a split trial, PWC provided evidence of Mr Oberto giving conflicting explanations for NF Global transactions, including his admission that related party loans recorded in NF Global accounts were a fiction intended to deceive UK and European banking regulators.
NF Global Ltd v. Oberto – High Court (27.08.25)
25.187