Seems Colin may have more legal issues to deal with. From 3News:
Colin Craig is under fire for allegedly omitting election expenses on his 2014 electoral return that would have put him over the permitted spending cap.
The former Conservative Party leader is being accused of leaving more than $7000 worth of spending during last year’s election campaign, off his East Coast Bays M30 electoral return.
Former party board member John Stringer has put forward the allegations at a press conference in Christchurch and says he has only recently received proof he needed to make the allegations public, and instigate a formal investigation.
It is a brave thing to do to make allegations against someone who has not been shy in the past of protecting his legal interests.
The expenditure as filed by Mr Craig was $20,010.50.
He has accused Mr Craig of deliberately falsifying at least five M30 returns, annotating costs across other electorates.
Party officials were concerned Mr Craig was engaged in a “deliberate pattern of dishonesty to conceal this”, he says.
Items allegedly not declared by Mr Craig included billboards used at the party’s campaign launch on June 22 at Rangitoto College.
An invoice supplied to 3 News sets out the billboards’ cost from a billboard production agency addressed to Chameleon Advertising – the Conservatives’ advertising agency.
However, the details are not included on Mr Craig’s electoral return.
If this is the extent of the allegation I suspect the inquiry will not take long and that Craig will be exonerated. The billboards complained of were clearly advertising the Conservative Party and not Mr Craig personally and, presuming they are recorded in the party’s return of expenses as claimed by Mr Craig, this is where the expense should be accounted for. There is a process in identifying party and electorate expenses and apportioning expenses to each return and this appears to be what happened here.
I am no fan of Mr Craig but if his enemies want to catch him they will need to do better than this.
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