1 – In 2005, Owen Glenn paid $100,000 towards a legal defence fund for a case in Peters’ name.
2 – Peters was not told that Glenn had been a donor to that fund until last week according to both Peters and the lawyer Brian Henry. There is no evidence to the contrary. Neither Clark nor Key are accusing Peters of lying.
3 – There is a question of whether a legal defence fund should be declared in the registry of pecuniary interests or as a gift under Cabinet rules. It’s by no means clear that it should be. That’s what this issue boils down to – there is no suggestion of corruption, only potentially failure to comply with these two rules. This is being investigated by the Speaker and Cabinet officials. There is a further question over gift duty but inadequate information to go on at present.
4 – The Dompost has published allegations that the Vela family legally donated money to New Zealand First.
5 – Without providing any evidence (and despite the fact that the cheque pictured int he article clearly says ‘non-transferable’), the Dompost suggests that some of that money was diverted away from the party into Peters’ personal funds.
6 – Peters has not denied that the Vela’s made donations, he is under no obligation to reveal every legal donation to his party. Peters has stated he will sue the Dompost for defamation over its unevidenced allegations that he took party donations for his personal use.
7 – National refuses to rule out having Peters in a National-led Government based on the information available. They are calling on the Government to sack him on the available information.
8 – National wants the PM to investigate the internal finances of another party but refuses to open its own books.
9 – At the same time as these donations around Peters, National received over $2 million in anonymous donations funneled through trusts it set up specifically to hide the identities of its large donors. The practice is now illegal thanks to the Electoral Finance Act.
10 – Key has stated that National would repeal the Electoral Finance Act and make large anonymous donations and secret trusts legal again.
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