Gloriavale workers packed jars until their hands bled to meet illegal honey order
As a teenager in Gloriavale, Levi Courage worked up to 70 hours a week filling jars of honey until his hands bled so they could be illegally exported to Vietnam.
The honey, from Gloriavale company Forest Gold Honey, was exported using forged government certificates “doctored up in a back room” using Photoshop, the Greymouth District Court has heard.
The company’s marketing and sales liaison Maranatha Stedfast was sentenced to 150 hours of community work and was singled out as the mastermind behind the $200,000 fraud. He was aided by contractor Jacqualine Elizabeth Brown who successfully sought a discharge without conviction – though she was ordered to pay $25,000 in costs.
The court heard how the pair blatantly disregarded export rules and arranged to have official documents forged by “fall guy” Christopher Courage.
When Brown was questioned by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) she sent investigators emails that had been edited to minimise her culpability.
One honey shipment was successfully exported in 2018, but a second was stopped by Customs in 2019.
While the crime damaged New Zealand’s reputation in the export market, arguably the real victims are the unpaid workers in Gloriavale, predominantly young men like Levi Courage, who literally shed blood, sweat and tears to get the honey ready.
Courage successfully proved in the Environment Court in May 2022 that he was a worker and not a volunteer, as the community’s leaders claimed. He worked without pay, holidays or labour laws.
He said he clearly remembers having to fulfil the order for 200,000 honey jars of all sizes in just three days.
He and several other boys worked for 50 hours without sleep, had a four-hour break and then worked another 72 hours without sleep to get the order done. He ended up exhausted and with bleeding hands.
When Courage left school at 15 he worked at Forest Gold Honey full-time. He had only one week of holiday a year, and if he did not work he was not allowed to eat.
“I was being used as a slave and not being paid … It was awful.”
He began working at the company before and after school doing all kinds of work, including extracting honey from frames, filling jars and packaging.
“Sometimes we would start at 3am, go to school then work again until 9pm. It was pretty hard. It was hard to focus on one or other. If I was good at work then my school work would suffer,” he said.
Suffering was just part of being born into the highly controlled group.
“It was very demanding physically, but everyone was doing their part for the community so I wanted to as well,” he said.
“I do remember discussing with my brother about how we needed to get the lidding machine working as we were lidding by hand and our palms were bleeding.
“I didn’t think twice about being so tired. It was my part I was doing to help the community – at least that’s what I thought.”
Forest Gold Honey went into voluntary liquidation on November 27, owing more than $1 million. Charges were subsequently withdrawn against the company and its director Mark Christian, the son of Gloriavale’s late founder Hopeful Christian.
Stedfast’s lawyer, Marcus Zintl, said the case had been a “significant fall from grace” for his client, who had been in the leadership team at Gloriavale, because he had to resign from the school board and directorships of several community-owned businesses.
Stedfast also had to stop doing work with sex offenders who were returning to the community, he said.
Zintl said Stedfast did not know what an MPI health certificate was and requested Christopher Courage to copy one he was sent by a third party.
Judge Raoul Neave said at the Greymouth District Court on Thursday that the certificates were used to confirm produce had been prepared in accordance with New Zealand standards.
“He’s not an idiot. It’s blindingly obvious what they’re for,” he said.
Zintl said Brown had requested the documents and Stedfast was inexperienced.
“It was extremely stupid of him,” Zintl said.
“Stupid is one way of putting it,” the judge replied.
Zintl told the judge that community work would place undue pressure on Stedfast’s family.
Stedfast was currently working part time as a carpenter, Zintl said, while his wife was due to give birth to her twelfth child and the couple were homeschooling six of their children at the community’s Lake Brunner property where they lived.
‘Wilful blindness’
Judge Neave said Brown received an email from an MPI adviser saying that honey could not be sent to Vietnam, then sent an email to Stedfast directly contradicting the adviser.
Brown’s lawyer, Stewart Sluis, said she did not know she would be personally liable and was ignorant of the law.
She did not have experience in exporting and was currently working as a marketer selling plastic sleeves for labels in supermarkets in the UK, Europe and America.
“She firmly believes, feels like she was a scapegoat for what was happening behind the scenes at Forest Gold Honey. She trusted the Christian community,” he said.
She ceased all dealings with Gloriavale when she found out MPI had sent a letter to Christopher Courage warning him that he was in breach of export duties and could be liable for a $50,000 fine.
Judge Neave said Brown could not plead guilty to charges of aiding and abetting while claiming she had no knowledge of the fraud.
Sluis said Brown had “wilful blindness” and accepted she had an inkling the documentation was false but turned a blind eye.
He said she received a call from a woman she believed at the time was from MPI telling her there was no issue with getting honey into Vietnam.
Sluis went through MPI’s call logs and found no calls to or from Brown. In hindsight, Brown now believes it was not MPI on the phone.
He said Brown was surprised new export documents came back “quick as a flash” after she suggested to Stedfast that changes be made. It should have raised alarm bells that they were being doctored up in a back room in Photoshop, he said.
Judge Neave said the export documents were “completely dodgy” and it was a nonsensical fraud because Vietnamese authorities would not accept them anyway.
Sluis said a conviction would hinder Brown’s ability to obtain visas to travel internationally for her job.
He said Brown was a South African citizen currently based in the UK but intended to move back to New Zealand, where she had lived for four years
Crown prosecutor Karyn South said Maranatha Stedfast was the principal offender as he directed Christopher Courage to create the documents.
She said Courage was just doing the “donkey work” directed by Stedfast, and Brown was in the middle checking the technical details in the documents and pointing out some errors.
“If there is any fall guy here it’s Christopher Courage,” she said.
When interviewed by MPI, Brown said she knew the documents were fake.
South said Brown had dragged out the justice process for four years and only pleaded guilty on the morning of her judge-alone trial.
Brown deceived MPI when she told investigators she had information and would forward all the emails to them.
“What she’s done is taken the original email and altered it to recast or minimise her involvement with small but meaningful alterations,” South said.
Judge Neave said Brown’s actions were “stupid” and the whole thing was “shonky”.