The Serious Fraud Office case against two individuals involved with the NZ First Foundation is based on heroic assumptions, where the SFO has to prove that an actual crime was committed.
The actual crime committed is perplexing. It is best summed up by the lawyer for the defence, Tudor Clue.
“We ask the question: Where is the deception? The party management were not deceived,” he said.
On Wednesday the SFO called Apirana Dawson, the highly successful NZ First insider who ran the successful campaigns at the 2014 and 2017 general elections as well as Winston Peters’ successful by-election campaign in Northland.
Dawson keeps a low profile but is well known in political circles for being an extremely effective campaigner and Peters’ most trusted advisor. He is respected by both the right and left, and many were surprised he chose to leave the Parliament after getting Winston and NZ first into a position where NZ First held the balance of power.
The consultant, who helped manage NZ First’s 2015 Northland by-election and 2017 general election campaigns, said Peters expressed frustration with the lack of fundraising efforts from people in the party.
NZ Herald
This is well known in political circles. NZ First have never been good fundraisers. It has held back good campaigners like Dawson from getting more votes for Winston and New Zealand First.
The SFO case makes some interesting claims.
Prosecutor Paul Wicks told the court it was irrelevant that the money was being used for the benefit of NZ First.
“This case is not about the use of the money but the exercise of control over that money,” he explained.
“It was for the party to decide and control how it wanted to spend its money, not for the defendants to do so.”
How is this fraud? There is apparently no allegation that any money went missing.
The SFO is not the organisation to prosecute breaches in Electoral law. Furthermore, the SFO has appeared to take existing law and turn it inside out and upside down in some sort of convoluted and heroic manner in which to try and make criminal charges stick when electoral law and non-criminal charges might have been more successful.
The SFO seems to be saying that the Electoral Commission was deceived, yet they neither receive funds nor ask for them. They simply process paperwork.
The SFO and prosecutor Paul Wicks appear to be clutching at straws and contorting the law in ways that have never before been imagined. If this case is an example of the level of rigour that the SFO applies to cases then I think they are going to lose every one of their political cases.
Please share this article so others can discover The BFD.