Updated: Is this Allan Hubbard's day of reckoning?

UPDATE: There were arrests by the SFO yesterday, but Allan Hubbard was not one of them. The SFO arrested Michael and Jacqueline Bradley, who are alleged to have defrauded investors of around $15 million.

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We haven't blogged a lot about Allan Hubbard and the collapse of South Canterbury Finance and his other companies. Part of us wants to believe that Hubbard was a kindly man who wanted to help people, but for whom record-keeping was not a strong point. However, as more and more information has emerged over the last few months, there seem to be many more questions than there are answers. Now Stuff reports:

The Serious Fraud Office says it will make an arrest today on charges relating to a Ponzi-style investment fraud involving tens of millions of dollars.

The identity of the business person facing arrest remained a mystery last night.

Now this all seems a bit cloak-and-dagger. But the next paragraph is interesting:

The SFO is not ruling out embattled South Canterbury businessman Allan Hubbard, but Hubbard said he thought it was unlikely.

We note that the SFO director made this recvelation to Parliament's Law and Order select Committee yesterdayit seems a little odd that the SFO refuses to rule Allan Hubbard out as being the subject of today's arrest, given the likely newsworthiness if that is indeed the case. We guess that all will be revealed at some time later in the day..

As an aside, the Stuff story also enlightens readers such as myself on just what a Ponzi-type fraud is - read on:

Today's arrest stems from an investigation begun after a call to the SFO from the Companies Registrar, who had received a complaint about a suspected Ponzi scheme – a type of fraud that pays investors from their own money or that of other investors rather than from an actual profit.

That this has been a combined effort between the Registrar of Companies and the SFO suggests that it could well be Hubbard in the frame, however unpalatable that might be to his loyal supporters. We'll update as soon as anything is known.