Stuart Garner is a tough man to figure out. On one hand, he’s responsible for resurrecting the Norton name and bringing to market a thoroughly modernized Commando twin-cylinder roadster, as well as a truly imaginative V4-powered V4 SS superbike.
On the other, he routed money from three pension funds he controlled — the Dominator 2012, Commando 2012, and Donington MC schemes — into Norton to help prop the business up as it struggled to pay off suppliers. And, as if that’s not enough, his company cannibalized parts off motorcycles in for warranty work in order to complete bikes still on the production line — because those aforementioned suppliers had cut him off — in what has to be the ultimate of motorcycle manufacturing Ponzi schemes.
The mountain of debt accumulated eventually saw Norton put into receivership and sold to Indian company TVS. But that’s just normal in the world of suspect financing. Stealing money from pensioners, it seems, is a little more serious, at least in Britain.
Garner, you see, was the sole trustee of all three of those funds — two named after iconic Norton models and the third after its new fancy headquarters — and was accused of having moved somewhere between 11 and 14 million pounds (CDN$19 million to CDN$24 million), far in excess of the rules — British law permits just five per cent of occupational pensions to be invested into the employer’s company. According to The Guardian, “more than 200 ‘ordinary working people”’ had had their entire pension pots invested into Norton shares.”
As you might have surmised, he’s been ordered to pay all that money back and, to no one’s surprise, he hasn’t got the money to reimburse the pension funds. Perhaps that’s why the Derby Magistrates’ Court, which tried his case, is actually referring Garner’s sentencing to a higher court. As it turns out, Magistrates’ Court can only impose a maximum sentence of six months, but England’s Crown Court can sentence him to two years’ jail time, something presiding District judge Jonathan Taaffe was obviously hoping for when he said, “This clearly crosses the custodial threshold and I am sending the case to Crown Court.”
There is some (almost) good news in all this financial malfeasance. Those already-sold V4 SS superbikes that Garner stripped parts from? Well, originally, TVS, the company that bought Norton’s brand name and intellectual property, was going to repair them free of charge for customers, something, it pointedly pointed out, it was under no obligation to do.
But then, its engineers found that Garner’s original design had no less than 35 defects sufficiently dangerous that the company deemed the bike unroadworthy. Nonetheless, it has stepped up and TVS — or, more accurately, the new Norton — will offer all owners of the faulty SS models a brand-new totally re-engineered SV version of the V4 for just 10,000 pounds (CDN$17,000). Considering that the original cost 44,000 pounds (CDN$76,000) and they are, again, under no legal obligation to satisfy the previous company’s outstanding obligations, that’s a truly class move.
Keyword: Ex-motorcycle company CEO guilty of defrauding pensioners