What a beatup
June 27th, 2007 at 2:14 pm by David FarrarLianne Dalziel, in relation to the Tranz Rail Securities Commission case, spoke in Parliament and said:
There were interests out there who did not want these defendants to be pursued; at one point I felt that those interests did not want the defendants to be pursued at any cost. So I want to place on record my congratulations to Jane Diplock and the entire team at the Securities Commission on having the guts and the gumption to take on these very strong, powerful interests in our country.
Then Winston Peters jumped in and presumably invented the claim that some people on the commission had faced threats relating to their employment.
Then Michael Cullen added to the hysteria and said the claims of threats were “very serious” and worthy of further investigation.
So what were there threats and these strong powerful interests?
Well the Securities Commission chairwoman, Jane Diplock, has today told us. Basically there were none.
She in fact pointed out the pressure had been worse in other cases. The only thing Diplock could cite was critical media reports. Hardly the same as threats of retribution from strong and powerful interests.
Jane Diplock deserves our thanks for standing up for the rights of small shareholders and getting a good settlement. It is a pity her own Minister had to invent some sort of secret threatening cabal to try and make the story more juicy. One expects that sort of nonsense from Peters, but not from Dalziel who generally is one of the more sensible Ministers.
No tag for this post.
June 28th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Poor unwell Lianne – I must increase her psychogenic meds.
Vote:June 28th, 2007 at 9:37 am
That’s a bloody tenuous connection for Cullen to have made. It’s a big leap from one party being critical of aspects of proceedings to powerful forces trying to stop them. To provide some context on the NBR reference he made, some of us did become critical of the Securities Commission’s handling of the case, but whether they should have brought proceedings or not never came into it – after all, they were in receipt of what they believed to be compelling evidence and we were not.
An example of why we became critical dates back to early 2004 when it was revealed that the commission hadn’t actually put the Tranz Rail matter to bed, it was still investigating. Back then I asked the investigator at the commission – and I’m not a lawyer, so had no knowledge of the specific provisions around the course of action they eventually took – whether there was a statute of limitations upon when they could take the action. I got the standard “no comment.”
Then, when they announced the proceedings it rapidly clear that they had brought them too late by a matter of months to be able to claim damages. Heck, that fact, we thought, warranted some criticism. They have since argued that the law is silly, and should be changed, and apparently it will be. But silly or not, the law existed and wasn’t the least bit ambiguous. The commission had a period of time in which to commence proceedings if they wanted to claim damages, they commenced those proceedings too late and that aspect of their claim was thrown out. That, in case Dr Cullen is confused about the matter, was the nature of the criticism the commission received from NBR. There was no underlying intent whatsoever.
Vote:June 28th, 2007 at 11:05 am
The laws around this issue were and still are well below the international standards. It never ceases to amaze the naievety of the legislators and regulators. We were and still are an asset strippers paradise. Worse still we are an identity fraudsters paradise as the Immigration Service and the Companies Office both know. As other jurustictions tighten up their corproate governance laws and regulations we become even more exposed.Its going to be sad to have to say Told you so but you can only tell some thick people.
Vote:June 28th, 2007 at 11:46 am
That may be – if the law needs to be changed then change it. But the fact remains that if the commission wanted damages they had to commence proceedings about eight weeks earlier than they did. Cullen, Peters and Dalziel would have you believe that when journalists criticise the commission for not having done that then they’ve signed some sort of Devil’s pact with Fay & Richwhite. Frankly I’d rather we confronted our shortcomings in this country and made sure we don’t make the same mistakes twice, rather than give credence to sorts of rubbish some of our politicians have been spouting in recent days.
On the same issue, the following email just arrived:
See below the patsy question by Winston and the ridiculous answer by Helen.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is she aware of the circumstances around the purchase by Capital Markets of BNZ interests, which were then sold off to Fay Richwhite, the private company of Michael Fay and David Richwhite, which were then sold at three times the value the same day, thereby advancing them to the tune of $100 million, and who has inquired into that?
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: I am aware that the incoming National Government in 1991 did indeed effect a very large bail-out of the Bank of New Zealand, which I understand at the time was 30 percent owned by Fay Richwhite.
I’d have thought the more salient questions were:
Question 1: who were the twits that sold it for a third of its value in the first place ?
Answer: the Labour Goverment (of which Helen Clark was a member)
Question 2: And who was it that had consulted Fay and Richwhite on that sale in the first place ?
Answer: again, the Labour Goverment (of which Helen Clark was a member)
Quite!
Vote:June 28th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
I thought it was fairly standard that when you consult on a deal you are banned from being a participant in it.
But then it was 20 years ago.
Vote:June 28th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
You make several fair points here David. However, I still can’t help but feel like your energys would be better spent pointing out how crooked the business history of Fay and Richwhite have been – especially given the relevance of this history to New Zealand politics and the perversion of our democratic process. Why bother with this when you can sit back and take potshots at your political opponents though I guess?
Also, why take the words of Jane Diplock at face value. With the ammount of money involved in this scandel surely we can’t discount the possibility of her being compromised.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: I am aware that the incoming National Government in 1991 did indeed effect a very large bail-out of the Bank of New Zealand, which I understand at the time was 30 percent owned by Fay Richwhite.
And who left them that mess – Labour, which also bailed out the BNZ once before.
Anyway, what else could you expect in political posturing from Labour, who are still angry that Toll Rail beat them to buy up the TRL shares and are still trying to pressure Toll Holdings to sell them back TRL by abusing their monopoly control of the rail tracks to set unacceptably high prices for access to the rail network.
And in the wings Labour’s union affiliate are all cheering this on because they all are socialists who want rail back in government hands and hate Toll who have stood up to union blackmail in Australasia.
The sooner we get rid of this socialist anti-business Labour government the better, all their posturing over the settlement is clearly cheap political shots very reminiscent of the hard-line socialism that is taking over the party as they desperately seek to cling onto power.
Vote:June 30th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Dalziel has strong union ties being a former lawyer for the SWFU.
Most of what has been said in parliament by Labour is posturing to the unions who control 99.9% of the rail workforce and who want the government to buy out Toll Rail.
Dalziels position is not surprising at all as the unions are callingthe shots more and more in Labour’s third term and will be called out to the max to help the unpopular government cling on to power next year
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