It began with an argument over work bicycles and ended in an $868k dispute
A husband and wife accused of “siphoning” company money were sacked weeks after being suspended. The Employment Court says the company got it wrong.
The case was decided by the Employment Court in Auckland on September 25, 2026. The husband was a director, shareholder and the company's Assistant Commercial Manager. His wife worked alongside him, most recently in human resources.
It all started with bicycles. Early in 2024, one of the other directors came back from leave to find the husband had bought bikes for staff under a work-ride scheme - a purchase he thought had never been signed off. What began as mild irritation grew into a directors' meeting, then a much wider dig into how money moved between the company's four founding directors, their spouses, and the private companies some of them used to invoice the business.
By late April, Optimal Fire suspended the couple on full pay, citing only "various transactions" under review - no further detail offered. Both asked what, exactly, they were meant to be explaining. Both were told to wait for a meeting on May 7. There, they were finally handed a narrowed list of 24 transactions. They wrote back on May 20, arguing the payments were authorised, or drawn against money the husband said the company already owed him.
The company wasn't satisfied. Two days later it rejected their answers outright and gave them until noon the next day to say more. Their lawyers pushed back on the deadline and asked for supporting material - WhatsApp messages between directors, access to the shared drive, records of what the other directors had been spending on themselves.
The company said no to nearly all of it. WhatsApp, it said, was "a third party not controlled by Optimal Fire." The other directors' spending was irrelevant, because they weren't under investigation. On May 31, the couple was summarily dismissed, accused of misappropriating company funds through unauthorised personal spending and invoices redirected to benefit their home.
The judge wasn't convinced, on any front.
The suspension came first. No urgency justified skipping a chance to be heard, the judge found, and there was no evidence either of them had tried to delete anything or cover their tracks. The wife came off worse in this part of the story: she'd moved into human resources well before any of this began, yet was treated, in the judge's words, as "a byproduct" of concerns really aimed at her husband.
The investigation held up no better. Refusing the couple access to the very records that might have backed up their explanations, while dismissing their requests as an attempt at "obfuscation," was - in the judgment's own words - "especially telling."
Then the substance of the case gave way entirely. The judge found the husband likely had a credit balance of more than $339,000 sitting in his favour, built from unpaid drawings, an unclaimed car allowance and a company loan - money he says he was simply drawing down when the business covered his family's expenses. It turned out the other directors had done much the same. One had immigration costs and an overseas holiday billed to the company. Another had dental bills paid. Neither was ever queried the way the couple's spending was.
Optimal Fire's own numbers told their own story. An early tally put the loss above $868,000. The formal counterclaim asked for $384,124.23. A pre-trial revision cut that to $285,740.18. Then, after the company's own expert admitted double-counting one item under cross-examination, it dropped again, to $280,056.18. The court dismissed the whole thing.
Reinstatement - usually the first remedy on the table under the Employment Relations Act 2000 - was ruled out. The relationship, the judge said, is "beyond repair," pointing to related liquidation proceedings, a High Court claim, and a caveat lodged against the couple's family home. Instead, the husband was awarded $55,000 for the harm caused, plus lost wages and a handful of sums still to be worked out, including a fortnightly payment he says the company owed his consultancy. The wife, who the court accepted had suffered severe anxiety and panic attacks requiring medical care, was awarded $50,000 plus $59,575.02 in lost wages. Neither faced a penalty over a separate, unrelated holiday pay breach.
