The "intent" crunch for me comes down to the unit trust top up
Fourth, compensation totaling some $150,000 was made because Peter felt morally, and possibly legally, responsible for some poor investment decisions, not to "boost performance". Can I prove that? Not conclusively of course - motives are never provable. But it's worth noting that the first payment, of less than $9,000, was part of a much larger payment of $1.3 million paid by Peter to those in the Huljich Unit Trusts because he felt responsible to compensate them for a poor investment decision. If he had wanted to "boost performance" in the KiwiSaver funds, spending $1.3 million for a benefit to the KiwiSaver funds of less than $9,000 was a very expensive way of achieving that. (The Unit Trusts were subsequently closed, partly because at the time there was little interest in investing in them and their "performance" was never advertised.)