The NZ Herald reports
A senior solicitor has been convicted for escaping Auckland’s Covid-19 lockdown last year which he boasted about on social media as he snuck through “checkpoint Charlie”.
The jaunt came just days after another lawyer and her partner, the son of a District Court judge, fled to Wanaka and became the target of the public’s wrath.
By his own admission, solicitor Umar Kuddus said he felt “trapped at home” as the Government used strict measures in an attempt to curb the spread of the delta variant from August last year.
Because of the 28-year-old’s brazen social media use, his excursion south of the alert level 4 border didn’t go unnoticed.
Kuddus, who largely acts in civil and commercial litigation cases, emailed the Hamilton District Court on September 15 about a financial assessment hearing he was due to attend two days later. In the same message he also noted he was unable to travel from Auckland to the hearing and requested it is conducted by telephone.
Despite the court concurring, Kuddus drove for the southern border in a bid to reach the relative freedom of Waikato’s level 2 at 8am on September 17.
He did not have a work exemption, nor did Kuddus have a personal exemption to cross the boundary, court papers released to the Herald read.
Read more
