Police have frozen a $1m home and nearly $190,000 belonging to the
man who runs a gardening chain charged with supplying equipment and
advice to cannabis growers.

But Switched On Gardener owner Michael Quinlan says he will pursue
the Crown for millions of dollars in lost earnings if his company
collapses and he succeeds in defending the charges.

Police sought restraining orders against Quinlan, owner of the 16
Switched On Gardener stores, in the High Court at Auckland this week.

No mention was made in court of what assets the police were seeking
under a civil forfeiture law which came into force in December.

But Quinlan told the Weekend Herald that police had seized $189,000
in a bank account - money he planned to invest in his business, which
had been hit hard after the police raids.

He also said his Gulf Harbour home - worth more than $1 million
according to property records - had been restrained by police. This
means Quinlan cannot sell the home or borrow money against it.

The company director said he understood why the Government had
introduced the civil forfeiture law, and had no problem with his
house being frozen.

"You can't have people accused of major crimes selling their assets
off. But I'm not guilty of any crimes and I don't intend to sell my home."

However, he said, he had instructed his lawyers to apply to get the
$189,000 back.

"We are going to fight that. The bank had instructed me to use that
money to prop up the business.

"If I can't get that money and we go bust, then we win the court
case, we'll be going after the Crown for our lost earnings."

He said the Switched On Gardener chain had an annual turnover of $16 million.

Quinlan, 50, is facing criminal charges after police raided 35
businesses and numerous homes at the end of a two-year undercover
investigation, codenamed Operation Lime.

Switched on Gardener stores had been allowed to keep trading if staff
followed tough bail conditions requested by police.

These required every customer to show identification and give their
phone number, address and date of birth.

Some judges refused to impose the conditions, and in the Auckland
District Court, Judge David Harvey has removed that bail condition
for Quinlan. This has a flow-on effect for all those charged with him.

The Crown has appealed against Judge Harvey's decision, and a hearing
will be held in the High Court at Auckland next week.

Quinlan said the bail conditions caused a 70 per cent drop in
business during the three weeks they were in force.

He said the Crown appeal was a "waste of taxpayers' money" as up to
nine district court judges had refused to impose the bail conditions.

Police said Operation Lime would "break the cornerstone of the
illicit cannabis cultivation industry", and claimed the gardening
chain would not have made a profit without supplying equipment and
advice to cannabis growers.

Detective Inspector Stu Alsopp-Smith, who was in charge of the
Auckland part of Operation Lime at the time of the arrests, said most
of the businesses involved made their profit from supplying tools to
grow cannabis.

"We believe a number of the businesses wouldn't exist if it wasn't
for the cannabis market," he said.

"We believe most of the equipment sold by these outlets is used to
cultivate cannabis."

The Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act used to freeze Quinlan's assets
allows the proceeds of crime to be forfeited to the Crown based on
the balance of probabilities.

It replaced a law which required police to prove "beyond reasonable
doubt" that assets were profits of crime.

Essentially, the change placed the onus on the owners to prove how
they paid for or obtained frozen assets.