One World Diary

Mark Chisnell on the International Regatta and the OneWorld perspective on 'Aucklandgate'

It all started when Reeves left OneWorld around May last year, apparently dissatisfied at the restructuring of the team that was taking place - you probably remember the stories about our funding crisis. Sean took with him his termination pay-off, which I suspect was a big chunk of our remaining cash at that stage. As is normal in these cases that required him to maintain the confidentiality agreement that is part of all our contracts, along with other clauses like a mutual agreement not to disparage each other.

At this point, you'd think Reeves would just bank his money and go sit on a beach until the merry go-round did a lap and the 2006 Cup teams started hiring, when a man of his reputation could've expected to be courted for a senior position by another top team.

Instead of which, according to the documents subsequently lodged with the Seattle courts by Oracle, GBR Challenge and now Team DC, Reeves' reaction seems to have been to start a garage sale of all the confidential documents and information he had squirreled away in the previous years.

The question that I keep asking myself is why? What was he thinking? What was wrong with the beach option? Plenty of people have been hired and fired from Cup teams before, and if you don't fit into one operation there's a good chance that you'll fit into another team down the track. So just sit this one out, and your turn will come. But it seems Sean Reeves wasn't having any of that. I barely know him, he left a couple of months after I joined and while I spent the bulk of that time in Seattle, he was in Auckland - so I'm not about to guess an answer to the question.

Oracle were good enough to tell us what was going on after he approached them, and it was pretty clear that the team had to put a stop to it. So a civil action was started against Reeves for breach of his separation agreement with OneWorld. Reeves wouldn't agree to our terms to stop the garage sale, and so the case is proceeding to the US Federal courts - though we don't expect to hear a result any time soon.

The current media storm arose from Sean Reeves defence against this civil suit, which was to lodge a document with the court alleging that other OneWorld team members had stolen confidential design information from their previous employers. If true, this would likely be a breach of their contracts, as well as a potential contravention of the America's Cup Protocol, which disallows the acquiring of ‘plans, specifications or other design information’ relevant to the 2000 Cup boats.

I've seen it reported elsewhere that Sean’s motive in accusing us of all this is to bar us from suing him under the legal 'clean hands' doctrine - whereby we must be innocent of any wrong-doing in relation to the lawsuits subject matter. It was also possible that he could try to force us to settle out of court, and keep the whole thing in a smoky back room. But the team didn't want to go forward with a cloud hanging over our collective heads, and so an extensive audit was conducted on the Protocol practices that were followed, particularly in the early days of the team's formation.

That investigation led to our recent submissions to the America’s Cup Arbitration Panel - who are there to adjudicate on Protocol issues and infringements - explaining what happened, and the background as to how and why. We have asked them for a ruling which they will present to us within the next four to six weeks.

While the team believes that the great bulk of Reeves' allegations have no basis in fact, there's an admission of some level of guilt in this submission - which is partly what got the fourth estate foaming at the mouth, and led to all those statements that we could be thrown out of the competition. The team believes that our Protocol infractions are minor, but it's the Arbitration Panel that will decide on the level of culpability and the penalty for it.

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