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“How Billionaire Jim Grenon’s Litigation Gambit Exposes the Corruption of New Zealand’s Media Democracy” - 19 December 2025

HIDDEN WEAPONRY

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Ltn

19 Dec 2025 — 9 min read

The machinery is visible now if you know where to look. In December 2025, as The Spinoff revealed through courtroom testimony, Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon has been secretly funding anti-co-governance campaigner Julian Batchelor’s defamation lawsuit against TVNZ and academic researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa. The case exposes five hidden connections that expose how concentrated wealth is weaponising New Zealand’s legal and media systems to silence criticism and consolidate narrative control—a strategy perfected by Peter Thiel’s successful destruction of Gawker.

Cui Bono: Who Profits from Silencing Journalism?

The answer lies in who controls what New Zealanders read, hear, and believe.

Grenon now owns 18.5% of NZME, the company that publishes the New Zealand Herald, operates Newstalk ZB, and owns numerous regional newspapers and radio stations BusinessDesk. This is institutional capture at scale. He arrived in that position through five hidden moves.

Connection 1: The Tax Avoidance Billionaire

In 2003, Grenon structured a sophisticated investment fund scheme that funnelled income—including money from minors, employees’ children, and third parties—into his personal registered retirement savings plan. Between 2004 and 2011, that RRSP earned C$58 million through tax-exempt vehicles. In 2013, as Canada’s Revenue Agency moved to investigate, Grenon transferred C$55 million (NZ$68.2m) to New Zealand. The CRA tried and failed to obtain a jeopardy order blocking the transfer. Canadian courts later found companies he controlled engaged in “abusive” tax avoidance on more than C$110 million. The case continues in appeals BusinessDesk.

This matters because Grenon arrived in New Zealand as a man experienced in circumventing law. He brought C$68 million, installed himself in a $19.5 million Takapuna beachfront property, and began quietly building a media empire RNZ.

Connection 2: The Alternative Media Front

Between 2023 and 2024, Grenon established two alternative media outlets:

The Centrist and NZ News Essentials (NZNE). BusinessDesk reported that both sites, funded by Grenon with no advertising revenue model (”suggesting their backer has deep pockets”), promoted right-wing narratives: anti-co-governance, anti-trans, anti-vaccine, anti-”woke” policy. They relied heavily on conspiracy theories, culture-war positioning, and attacks on mainstream journalism for accepting government public-interest journalism funding.

Critically, The Centrist offered to pay readers’ legal fees to fight “government overreach”—a signal that Grenon was building infrastructure for litigation warfare. When Grenon stepped back from directorship in 2023, The Centrist immediately declared support for Batchelor’s defamation case RNZ.

The Invisible Hand over Aucklan

Connection 3: The Trojan Horse Plaintiff

Julian Batchelor is not a natural litigant. Court testimony revealed he had previously been called “terrible things” and didn’t sue. He didn’t plan to sue over the August 2023 TVNZ story until Jim Grenon called him—the day after the story aired. Grenon’s words, according to Batchelor’s own testimony:

“I’ve been following you, I don’t think you’re a racist. I think we should sue TVNZ.”

It was also Grenon’s idea to include academic Hattotuwa as a defendant The Spinoff.

At trial, defence counsel Davey Salmon KC described the case as a

“Trojan Horse for someone else to have a tilt at the state broadcaster and an academic.” Salmon argued:

“It wasn’t really his [Batchelor’s] idea. These weren’t his targets... Mr Grenon was paying for all of this.”

Batchelor couldn’t articulate which legal costs he’d paid himself; Grenon was covering the bills NZ Herald.

The strategic brilliance here is visible:

use someone else’s face, someone else’s claimed grievance, while the billionaire remains “invisible”—Salmon’s exact word. It’s the Thiel playbook executed in Auckland.

Connection 4: Narrative Control via Media Ownership Consolidation

The timing is not coincidental. In March 2025, Grenon revealed a 9.3% stake in NZME. By September, it had grown to 17.9%. By late September, 18.5% BusinessDesk. As his stake increased, so did his influence. He installed board nominees and began openly discussing an “editorial advisory board” with “representation from both sides of the spectrum”—media code for ideological steering away from centre-left consensus.

Simultaneously, he was funding litigation against TVNZ, New Zealand’s second-major broadcaster.

The strategy:

acquire controlling interest in NZME (Herald + ZB), silence TVNZ through litigation intimidation, consolidate right-wing narrative control across the country’s dominant media infrastructure.

Academic Anne Salmond identified this pattern, writing on LinkedIn:

“It’s disturbing to see a powerful few weaponise their wealth to try and shut down open discussion and investigative journalism, and to manipulate democratic debate” LinkedIn.

Reddit users recognized the Thiel precedent:

“The practice of billionaires financing defamation lawsuits to stifle media voices resembles tactics used by Trump. It is concerning that the proprietor of the nation’s largest privately-owned media organization is supporting legal actions against the state-run broadcaster; this should raise red flags in a functioning democracy” Reddit.

Lawfare against Journalism

Connection 5: The Corrupted Expert Witness

Ex-TVNZ host Peter Williams was called as an “expert witness” by Batchelor to testify that TVNZ’s article was imbalanced.

His evidence:

Hattotuwa’s comments occupied 205 of 600 words; Batchelor’s response was one sentence (10 words). Outside the courtroom, Williams called Batchelor a “nutter” to TVNZ news director Shayne O’Sullivan. The remark was reported to Salmon KC, who then cross-examined Williams about it in open court—undermining the credibility of an expert brought to validate Grenon’s case Point of Order.

This is institutional damage:

when billionaires can fund litigation and manufacture “expert” testimony, the court system itself becomes a tool of narrative control rather than justice.

The Racism at the Core

What is Batchelor seeking to defend? Under cross-examination, Batchelor told the court he believes Māori have a fundamental

“lack of character,” that Māori are not indigenous to New Zealand, and that fair-skinned, ginger-haired people settled Aotearoa before Māori arrived. He insists he is “not a racist” while promoting pseudoscientific racial theories that originated in Nazi ideology The Spinoff.

The TVNZ story that triggered this lawsuit? It quoted Hattotuwa—a researcher on disinformation and hate speech—describing Batchelor’s “Stop Co-Governance” pamphlet as containing “dangerous speech” that “instigates harm offline” and represents “racist rhetoric” and “colonialism’s long shadow.”

Hattotuwa’s analysis is standard disinformation scholarship. Batchelor’s response:

weaponise a billionaire’s wealth to silence academic criticism.

Judge David Clark’s Discomfort—And Natural Justice

At trial, Judge Clark articulated the precise problem:

“There’s an interpretation which can go from one end of the spectrum, which is that these proceedings, in terms of the claim, were controlled and conducted by a third-party funder, which falls outside the auspices of this court. And that’s just a hard no—that should never happen.”

Yet Clark also noted that Grenon, the funder, had not been heard in court. Both the judge and Salmon acknowledged Grenon’s right to natural justice.

This is the legal trap:

holding a third-party funder accountable requires those questions to be aired publicly. Grenon’s “invisibility” strategy relies on the plaintiff absorbing the litigation without the billionaire ever having to defend his motives or accountability in open court NZ Herald.

The Boardroom Takeover

The Democracy Question

Judge Clark is expected to deliver his decision after Christmas 2025. But the larger judgment already belongs to Aotearoa’s citizens. When a Canadian billionaire with a history of tax avoidance can:

Establish alternative media outlets to test ideological messaging
Fund litigation against state broadcasters through a front plaintiff
Acquire nearly 20% of New Zealand’s largest media company
Install board nominees to reshape editorial direction
Remain “invisible” throughout court proceedings

...the democracy is broken.

Grenon has imported the Thiel playbook—silence critics through litigation, consolidate media ownership, steer narrative toward the billionaire’s ideological preferences. The Batchelor case is not about whether a pamphlet was accurately criticized. It is about whether concentrated wealth can weaponise the courts and media infrastructure to suppress democratic debate and marginalise Indigenous voices.

Rangatiratanga and Accountability

Aotearoa requires immediate action:

For Parliament: Strengthen Foreign Investment Review Board scrutiny of media acquisitions above 10%. Amend the Takeovers Code to require full transparency of third-party litigation funders and their motives.

For the Courts: Compel third-party funders to appear and give evidence in litigation they control. Natural justice demands the billionaire be heard—and cross-examined.

For Journalists: Document Grenon’s shareholding consolidation, the timing of Batchelor litigation, and changes to NZME editorial direction. This is investigative journalism’s core obligation.

For Māori: Recognise this as a systematic attack on Indigenous scholarship and voice. Sanjana Hattotuwa’s academic freedom—and the freedom of all Māori researchers to name racism—is under siege from capital.

The taiaha cuts both ways. Billionaires should not be allowed to play with litigation behind a cloak of invisibility. Aotearoa deserves a media system that serves tangata whenua and democracy—not concentrated wealth.

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right

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Sources Verified: RNZ, The Spinoff, BusinessDesk, NZ Herald, Point of Order, LinkedIn, Reddit. All URLs tested and live. Research completed December 18, 2025.

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