Another secret trust fund!
August 24th, 2008 at 8:00 am by David FarrarTim Selwyn will need to update his diagram, as the Herald on Sunday has unearthed another secret trust fund for NZ First.
The documents firstly confirm the existence of the Winston Peters Fighting Fund Trust.
This was established in February 1993 specifically to pay legal costs associated with Peters’ legal battles – such as the high-profile defamation action taken against him by businessman Selwyn Cushing.
This trust, of which Peters is listed in the documents as one of three trustees, is separate to the secretive Spencer Trust, which Peters has said he had no knowledge of.
The story has more information about the bills that were sent to the trust for paying.
So in the last few months we have now learnt of the following ways big business funds NZ First and Winston Peters:
- Directly to NZ First by breaking up their large donations into smaller ones through using different company accounts
- Through Brian Henry by donating money to Brian Henry who then doesn’t charge Peters
- Through the Spencer Trust, which Peters’ staff solicit money for
- Through the Winston Peters Fighting Fund Trust
How many more funding routes are there to be discovered?
The Privileges Committee should be very interested in this latest trust. Based on its name, it would appear that Peters has a beneficial interest in the Trust. Does it still exist? If so, it should have been declared on the Register of MPs Pecuniary interests if Peters is a beneficiary of it.
If it no longer exists, when did it get wound up? Was it just before the Register was established?
Related posts:
- Winston declares Spencer Trust donation
- More on Spencer Trust
- On a minor note
- Peters has breached the Register Rules
August 24th, 2008 at 8:03 am
No 5
Cashing cheques at Kermadec restaurant which cheques are bnever presentd for payment.
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 8:19 am
The food was cold/late/badly presented on every occasion, obviously.
That is why he kept going back, just to help them get their standards up to the mark.
Can no-one else see this!
Jeez!
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Look what Deborah Coddington says
“I remember going to a fundraising dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Pakuranga, and an Asian property developer from Remuera paid about $20,000 for a signed photograph of Richard Prebble. ”
Why didnt Winston think of that!!
“Most of the throng attending this dinner paid to sign up to the Asian Chapter, then when Act took Donna Awatere-Huata to the Supreme Court to have her expelled from Parliament, the Asian Chapter was pressured to pay the legal bills because their candidate, Kenneth Wang, was next on the list.”
Thats how you get onto ACTs list to get into parliament
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Too many trusts and too little we can trust.
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 9:10 am
So Henry told the Select Committee that he’d never billed Peters for his work since 1991, and trust minutes show a bill from Henry in 1993. Has Henry committed an offence by lying to the committee? Will the Lawyers’ Old Boys Club strike him off for dishonesty? Would you want this man as your lawyer?
Helen used the Electoral Finance Act to stifle free speech and justified it by saying that she didn’t want people using money to buy elections. Winston has received pots of money – free (or supposedly free) legal services are a type of financial gain – yet he’s widely considered to be on the lunatic fringe and his party got 5.7% of the vote at the last election. Hillary Clinton had far more money than Obama but Obama won the nomination. Labour lies again.
http://www.kiwipolemicist.wordpress.com
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 9:30 am
“Why didnt Winston think of that!!”
Probably because Winston knew he would not get 1 cent out of any Asian. Duh!
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 10:07 am
>How many more funding routes are there to be discovered?
1. Immigrants who need permanent residency status run the campaigns of NZ First, Labour, and the EPMU. They’re paid 35c/hour, drastically reducing the cost of those campaigns in order to keep them within the EFA limits. The EPMU stands up for the rights of its own slave employees by not docking their wages when they visit the toilet.
2. NZ First own a casino which is used to launder millions of dollars raised by NZ First volunteers who go door to door, canvasing and threatening that if the householder doesn’t give them money then one of Peter’s brothers and Brian Henry will come around and burn their house down. We find out that this sort of fund raising technique was specifically made legal by an amendment slipped in to the EFA at the last moment.
3. The airport tax, where travelers and tourists queue up at NZ airports to be shaken down one more time before they leave the country, turns out not be be going to airports. But to the Winston Peters Airport Trust. Winston claims never to have heard of the trust, but that journalists should talk to the trustees. The trustees turn out to be identical clones of Winston Peters, grown in test tubes in a secret DSIR laboratory back in the days of the Muldoon Government and who have been impersonating Peters for the last 20 years. One of the clones recently met Condoleeza Rice, after Peters had too much to drink and woke up that morning in an alleyway just off Courtenay Place. No one can find any law that specifically disallows this, so Helen Clark decides she is quite satisfied with the whole arrangement.
4. Peters has been visiting the homes of vulnerable old people and offering to paint their roofs, provided they sign over their life savings to him and change their wills to name NZ First as the sole beneficiary. They all say “you’re such a nice young man, we’ll vote for you too… now would you like a nice cup of tea and some scones”. Peters cuts costs by not bothering with an undercoat, and only paints the bits of the roof that the old person can see. Helen Clark rules that Peters was only guilty of help his constituents.
5. Helen Clark needed a coalition partner. Glenn, the Velas, or the EPMU bought her one for $50,000. The Labour/NZ First Government will settle for quite small baubles, as long as they’re shiny.
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 10:15 am
ghostwhowalks – the “hey look over there, someone is doing something just as bad” excuse doesnt quite work when the original person doing the dodgy deed is the Foreign Minister of the country, and has also railed against the kind of behaviour he has been found to be doing himself!
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 10:39 am
GWW, what Bevan said – how bout holding on the political point scoring every now and then? Try ‘reasoned debate on the matter at hand’ or something wacky like that.
This whole Peters thing really is getting hilarious, hope he can keep up!
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 11:40 am
I had to laugh at the $20,000 signed photographof Prebble. One of NZs great works of art.
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 11:55 am
$20,000 for a signed photo of Richard Prebble – gee Ghostie, you must be grinning on that one!
I wonder, what would someone pay for a signed painting by Helen Clark.
Of course, you’d never know if it was her genuine signature – her last incident with a signed painting being an example of fraud.
Say what you like about the old Prebmeister – at least his signature and photo was legit!
Perhaps Helen also signed the order to spend the $800,000k of taxpayer funds on pledge card electioneering back in 2005. Her signature is worth nothing, so whats to lose by having her do it?
/back on topic again/
Peters clearly is looking as bad as the Winebox litigants over all this murkiness. That’s why all the evidence being presented about secret trusts is so damning for him. From Winebox to Wine-soaked, a sad, desperate and damning end to the career of what was NZ’s most charismatic politicians.
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
In a previous post I said that everything that needed to be said about Winston First had already been said.
Rex W cautioned that perhaps there was more to come.
Rex was right. I was wrong. Is there another chapter still?
Are there really 5% worth of ‘nutters’ in the country prepared to vote for this charlitan?
Answer … there appear to be 34.5% of nutters prepared to vote for the perhaps most corrupt government in living history.
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
For I am Dave Lennard. Hear me roar.
Vote:August 24th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Ross. I believe that this week may also be ‘interesting’.
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