Written By: - Date published: 5:49 pm, August 29th, 2008 - 145 comments
Categories: election 2008, election funding, helen clark, nz first -
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Peters has stood down. Clark has taken over his portfolios.
It’s good that Peters appears to have accepted that this is a necessity and hasn’t turned on the Government. Clever of Clark to take the portfolios herself too.
[we nearly had the scoop on this too but it took too long for me to get an internet connection, damn Herald got in ten minutes earlier]
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Scoopit!
hs,
I don’t think we’re talking at cross purposes
If you look at pre EFA returns (e.g. 1996-2006) you will see that there are no amounts of $10k or less declared.
So yes, one can cheerfully assume that all the major parties had $10k and lower donations which they did not put on their return.
One can also find evidence that at least National and their backers washed their donations in the same way that NZ First seems to have done (by using trusts and by playing threshold and donation splitting games).
Anita
Just to get this clear are you suggesting.
1. that National and Labour have large numbers of non-declared donations of $9999 or less over and above those that are included on the register ?
2. that like NZ First the Nats and Labour have taken donations of more than 10k and put them into a trust and broken the donations down to chunks of less than 10k to avoid declaring them.
3. or are you suggesting both scenarios ?
What’s this bunch of opinionated crap on the front page of the SST this morning?
The “journalist” who wrote it obviously has a bee in her bonnet about something – intoning “…a turning point for this government”.
I wonder what proper news story had to be pulled at the last minute meaning they needed to fill the blank space with this – was this why it was delivered late this morning?
If it took only 25 hours for the SFO to investigate the 2,500 Winebox documents, it should take less than a day to investigate the few transactions involved with Winston Peters.
The SFO cannot be trusted and should not be doing the current investigation about the person who has quite rightly caused their imminent demise.
Clearly the structure of the SFO as set up originally cannot produce an accurate result.
http://wysiwygnews.com/1997_News/1997February23.html
In the commission of inquiry into various tax matters (known as the winebox inquiry) it was revealed that the Serious Fraud Office officers who were understood to have done the work, spent no more than 25 hours investigating the more than 2,500 documents which relate to the extremely complex schemes. Things got worse when Susan Pilgrim, a former senior prosecutor testified that when staff asked what was happening to the investigation, and which lawyer was assigned to the case, Director, Charles Sturt got angry and announced that he was looking into the matter himself. Under oath, Ms Pilgrim testified that the reaction of other staff was one of ridicule since Sturt was not believed to be competent to undertake an inquiry into complex financial transactions.
…
Director of the Serious Fraud Office, Charles Sturt has conceded to the Winebox inquiry that his office made no full investigation of the Winebox documents. This apparently lays him open to charges of having caused parliament to be misled. He advised the then minister, Paul East who subsequently told the house, that an investigation of the winebox documents revealed no evidence of any criminal activity. Sturt said at the time that his investigators had examined hundreds of documents. He now concedes that the assertions were “not strictly correct.” Winston Peters who was then a lone maverick alleging dirty deeds responded at that time with disbelief, and said that if they had examined the documents and found nothing, Sturt should be fired for incompetence. In an attempt to determine Sturt’s ability to understand the documents, the commission asked him to explain the transactions at issue. Sturt failed miserably.
I thought the name Gib Beattie, the SFO’s acting director, sounded familiar. How come he is still in the SFO at all, let alone in such a high position?
He was involved in the original Winebox fake investigation and should NOT be involved in any way in investigating Winston Peters.
Check the index of The Paradise Conspiracy for all the Beattie references.
e.g. page 2:
Gib Beattie couldn’t make up his mind whether to gloat or snarl, so he mixed the two expressions, his ears and nose appearing to twitch in the battle for facial control. His eyes, however, glittered with hate.
“Wishart, you bastard. You bastard! We’ve got you now!”
I barely had time to react – Serious Fraud Office investigator Steve Drain, a former cop, chose that moment to lunge across the seat in a bid to grab the camera and rip the film out. We fought briefly as I lashed out to stop him gaining a secure grip on the Olympus.
“Back off pal!,” I warned as menacingly as I could muster, “You don’t have any authority down here.” Perhaps realising that entering my vehicle and attempting to snatch the camera had overstepped the mark, Drain beat a retreat from the interior. Beattie, too, was backing away by now, the sneer appearing permanently etched on his face.
“We’ve got you, you bastard. Your day is coming soon, boy!,” he threatened.