Very interesting article by Steve Kilgallon on Stuff yesterday. It reports the experience of ex cop Martin Legge:
The inside man
Martin Legge spent two decades as a cop in Levin, catching the crims and then, as police prosecutor, taking them to court. Now, he says, he wonders why. “I’m embarrassed that we used to run around chasing guys for $1000 they ripped off Social Welfare,” he says. “The big money is heading out the back door through softly regulated industries full of people in suits who should know better.”
Mr Legge sees the world clearly. And he’s been right in the middle of the gaming industry:
After leaving the police, Legge worked for a gaming machine trust which gave out poker machine grants. What he saw over the next decade shocked, disgusted and disillusioned him. He tried to brief his local MP, the gaming minister Nathan Guy, on the state of the industry. And then Internal Affairs, the industry watchdog, rang him up. Would he, it asked, become a whistleblower?
Legge and his wife Liz hand-delivered two bulging ringbinders of documents to the department, packed with incriminating emails (some marked “delete this email forever”) to and from his colleagues at the Trusts Charitable Foundation. He also gave Internal Affairs a 9200-word statement.
He was interviewed by an investigator who said he was confident of a result. Then he was told it was a “slamdunk”. In January 2011, the head of investigations told the Legges the case was “90 per cent complete” and he was contemplating seven serious charges against individuals and the trust.
Sounds like serious wrongdoing. What happened next?
Legge waited, and waited.
He wrote again to Guy, who rebuffed him, he contacted the auditor-general’s office, and pursued Internal Affairs until March 20121, when the department finally told him it was, pretty much, case closed. By then, Legge says wryly, relations were “strained”.
Who shut this enquiry down, and why? (Reporters, start your OIAs.) What information does Mr Legge have, and who is he prepared to share it with? Predictably…
Legge’s contract with the foundation wasn’t renewed, and he has no doubt it was, and perhaps understandably, filthy at him for turning whistleblower. He was told he would never work in the industry again.
That doesn’t bother him. What does is that after all those years in the police, he knows when something dodgy has gone on. And he knows when there’s enough evidence to prosecute, or at least go to the Gambling Commission.
So why, when he supplied Internal Affairs with material on a string of questionable incidents that could have resulted in multiple prosecutions, has nothing happened?
“They have sold us out,” he says simply. When you hear Legge’s story, you wonder why anyone in the corporate world would ever blow the whistle again.
Read on, it’s a long and interesting article, great work by Steve Kilgallon. In the context of the current focus on the gaming industry in NZ we cannot allow this case to be swept under the carpet…
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