● The Trusts Charitable Foundation (TTCF Inc) ● The Trusts Community Foundation Ltd (TTCF Ltd) ● Otago Rugby Football Union (ORFU) ● Professional Rugby ● Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport ● Harness Racing ● Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) ● Gambling Commission ● Pokies ● Rorts ● Organised Crime ● Serious Fraud ● Political Interference
### stuff.co.nz Last updated 05:00 31/03/2013
Bungling officials squander whistleblower’s pokies help
By Steve Kilgallon
Internal Affairs investigators lost a vital file in their own office for nearly two years – and delivered a report on the allegations it contained by incorrectly guessing at its contents.
Internal Affairs insists the material did make its way to the inquiry team working on its biggest-ever case, the $30 million Operation Chestnut probe into pokies grants, run in conjunction with the Serious Fraud Office.
Martin Legge, the whistleblower who provided the information to Internal Affairs, said the SFO’s lead investigator on the case told him he’d never heard of him, nor seen his information. The file related to Auckland pub Jokers, potential ownership interests in the pub by the Otago Rugby Union and harness racing, and grants made to the two bodies. It also mentioned racing trainer and publican Mike O’Brien, who is central to Operation Chestnut. Legge handed over thousands of documents between September and November 2010 that provided a series of revelations about his former employer, Trusts Charitable Foundation (now Trusts Community Foundation).
In June 2012, dismayed at the department’s failure to act on his information, Legge asked for their return. Documents released under the Official Information Act show the request prompted a scramble in the department to find one particular file. The query bounced around seven staff and one email simply said: “So where is the file?”
When it was found, the original investigator, David Bermingham, who was removed from the case in late 2010, was flown from Christchurch to Wellington solely to confirm it was the right one. “It was like they had just found it on someone’s desk,” Bermingham told the Sunday Star-Times. Bermingham said he had long suspected the file was missing. “It became evidently clear that they didn’t have the file . . . I’m very confused how they were able to conduct an investigation without that file, certainly not a thorough one.”
Read more
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Related Posts and Comments:
21.2.13 DIA, SFO investigation #pokierorts
7.2.13 DIA not releasing report #ORFU #NZRU #pokierorts
24.1.13 Pike River, Department of Internal Affairs #skippingthebusiness
30.12.12 Internal Affairs is a whole other planet #whitecollarcrime #DIArorts
18.11.12 Martin Legge: DIA audit criticism #pokierorts #coverup
13.11.12 Martin Legge replies to Sunday Star-Times story #DIA #coverup
11.11.12 Department of Internal Affairs #pokierorts #coverup #TTCF
26.10.12 Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) – CULPABLE #pokierorts
24.10.12 Bad press for ORFU -NZ Herald
3.10.12 DScene: Russell Garbutt seeks DIA file to Crown Law #pokierorts
15.9.12 Martin Legge responds to NZ Herald news
27.8.12 DIA’s political cover-up of TTCF and ORFU rorts
22.8.12 Martin Legge releases emails to Dunedin community #ORFU
15.8.12 Keeping ORFU sweet [email]
12.8.12 DIA reshuffle: new investigation teams, money laundering, criticism
28.7.12 Pokie fraud: ODT fails to notice own backyard
25.7.12 Martin Legge backgrounds TTCF (pokie trust) and Portage and Waitakere Licensing Trusts #DIA
15.7.12 Martin Legge responds to media stories on Murray Acklin, TTCF and DIA
26.6.12 Department of Internal Affairs, ORFU, Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport, and TTCF
22.6.12 Connections: ORFU and local harness racing
5.6.12 The Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill
15.3.12 ORFU should be subject to full forensic investigation
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Media Links:
25.6.12 http://itsabigfatlie.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/richard-boock-sunday-star-times-24612.html
2.6.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/211666/determined-clean-sector
2.6.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/211669/internal-affairs-investigate-orfu-pokies
2.6.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/211671/mps-query-sees-all-hell-break-loose
29.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/sport/rugby/211018/rugby-financial-troubleshooter-warns-job-not-over
23.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/210293/grants-meant-amateur-rugby-used-pay-orfu-creditors
3.5.12 http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/7038067/Stadium-plans-met-with-scorn
3.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/207787/dinner-profits-went-day-day-costs
2.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/207653/orfu-unpaid-bill-obscene
1.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/207473/small-creditors-get-their-money-back-orfu
23.4.12 http://thestandard.org.nz/gaming-industry-whistleblower/
22.4.12 http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/6785852/The-inside-man
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 
● DIA (Department of Internal Affairs) and OAG (Office of the Auditor General) didn’t notice a significant file missing, in either of their investigations.
● DIA didn’t notice the file of its own whistleblower, Martin Legge, was missing.
REALLY ???
DIA didn’t notice the media stories of 2012-13. DIA was prepared (no, read actively and deliberately contrived) to ignore ongoing criticism, and the people it called in for interviews.
DIA’s Maarten Quivooy (a ‘slide-over’ from the Department of Labour who avoided the Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy) has repeatedly refused, along with his DIA boss, Paul James, to acknowledge there is a problem – that significant thoroughgoing timely evidence exists to lead major prosecutions (see multimillion-dollar white collar organised crime).
DIA monitors several blogs (including this one), and has been for a while – still it fails to do right by Martin Legge, DIA’s own whistleblower.
The OAG believed DIA.
The OAG claims it has completed a full audit investigation of DIA. Despite being confronted with news of the ‘location’ of the Legge file, OAG repeats the claim it has conducted a full investigation of DIA — because(???) DIA fed OAG lies and was evasive, and or OAG has little rigour in its ranks to doubt DIA’s leaky story.
Do the bureaucrats of your public service cover each others’ tails when the news is glaring — YES — to plant the rug over (inconvenient) ‘things’, in the political service of our elected politicians and the New Zealand Government.
Of this you can be sure.
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Related Posts and Comments:
21.2.13 DIA, SFO investigation #pokierorts
11.2.13 Recognising whistleblowers
7.2.13 DIA not releasing report #ORFU #NZRU #pokierorts
24.1.13 Pike River, Department of Internal Affairs #skippingthebusiness
30.12.12 Internal Affairs is a whole other planet #whitecollarcrime #DIArorts
22.11.12 Cull COVERS UP COUNCIL #massage
18.11.12 Martin Legge: DIA audit criticism #pokierorts #coverup
13.11.12 Martin Legge replies to Sunday Star-Times story #DIA #coverup
11.11.12 Department of Internal Affairs #pokierorts #coverup #TTCF
26.10.12 Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) – CULPABLE #pokierorts
24.10.12 Bad press for ORFU -NZ Herald
3.10.12 DScene: Russell Garbutt seeks DIA file to Crown Law #pokierorts
15.9.12 Martin Legge responds to NZ Herald news
27.8.12 DIA’s political cover-up of TTCF and ORFU rorts
22.8.12 Martin Legge releases emails to Dunedin community #ORFU
15.8.12 Keeping ORFU sweet [email]
12.8.12 DIA reshuffle: new investigation teams, money laundering, criticism
28.7.12 Pokie fraud: ODT fails to notice own backyard
25.7.12 Martin Legge backgrounds TTCF (pokie trust) and Portage and Waitakere Licensing Trusts #DIA
24.7.12 Mention in NZ Herald dispatches: TTCF and friends ORFU
15.7.12 Martin Legge responds to media stories on Murray Acklin, TTCF and DIA
26.6.12 Department of Internal Affairs, ORFU, Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport, and TTCF
22.6.12 Connections: ORFU and local harness racing
5.6.12 The Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill
4.6.12 Questions: ORFU and the Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport
29.4.12 Department of Internal Affairs, the gambling authority
22.4.12 DIA, OAG, TTCF and Otago Rugby swim below the line
15.3.12 ORFU should be subject to full forensic investigation
—
Media Links:
25.6.12 http://itsabigfatlie.blogspot.co.nz/2012/06/richard-boock-sunday-star-times-24612.html
2.6.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/211666/determined-clean-sector
2.6.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/211669/internal-affairs-investigate-orfu-pokies
2.6.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/211671/mps-query-sees-all-hell-break-loose
29.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/sport/rugby/211018/rugby-financial-troubleshooter-warns-job-not-over
23.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/210293/grants-meant-amateur-rugby-used-pay-orfu-creditors
3.5.12 http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/7038067/Stadium-plans-met-with-scorn
3.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/207787/dinner-profits-went-day-day-costs
2.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/207653/orfu-unpaid-bill-obscene
1.5.12 http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/207473/small-creditors-get-their-money-back-orfu
23.4.12 http://thestandard.org.nz/gaming-industry-whistleblower/
22.4.12 http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/6785852/The-inside-man
### thestandard.org.nz March 31, 2013 10:15am
Pokies and corruption?
By karol
Steve Kilgallon, in today’s Stuff, is reporting that evidence of wrong doing by Pokie trusts, presented to Internal Affairs mysteriously went missing. The article, perhaps necessarily because of lack of evidence, provides the most positive slant on the disappearance, putting it down to sloppiness.[…]It is all a bit murky. But back in November 2010 shortly after the investigation began, Graeme Ramsey of the Problem Gambling Foundation predicted there was more evidence of abuse of the funding of Pokies trusts to come.[…]It seems like some in the pokie industry have a lot of influence and a long reach. Some in this industry benefited from John Key and Steven Joyce’s SkyCity convention centre deal. The deal was made through flawed processes, as argued by the Green Party[…]The end result of this flawed process was a deal that would include an increase in SkyCity pokie machines. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of children are left unattended around SkyCity’s gambling areas. Significant International Affairs files going missing, deals made through flawed government processes.
So NZ is not a corrupt country, then, just one governed through sloppy processes?
Cui bono?
Read more
See comments received at the article.
Generally speaking, “best guess” isn’t taken as adequate by the Serious Fraud Office, is it? I mean, if there generally isn’t any way of knowing the truth and all possible evidence is put before them to back up one’s guess I suppose they have to take that but “Oh gosh-darm it, I know it was around here somewhere. Joan, have a look under the clean teatowels again there’s a good scout” ain’t impressive when it’s a SERIOUS Fraud Office investigation.
Looks like there is a need for a second tier, maybe the “Bindertwine & Expanding Foam, like, Whatever” division with a low standard for evidence and appropriately casual flip-a-coin censure/punishment protocols. With a punishment range from get off & awarded costs, to confiscation of everything except what you are wearing plus 15 yrs imprisonment no remand, there would be an incentive to get one’s shit together & face the SERIOUS guys.
Well, if this latest expose` by Steve Kilgallon doesn’t start some serious happenings it proves just one thing. Our Public Service is CORRUPT! The DIA has obfuscated on this ,the ‘pokie rorts’ for so long now, it can’t possibly be anything else but a programmed litany of events designed to mislead and shut down the truth. If the SFO isn’t up to speed on this then God help this country and all who live in it.
if this goes on then one of these days the ORFU will wake up and suddenly realise “we should have gone all the way bankrupt and started another fresh organisation …..”
Mike, it depends on the type of bankruptcy. A financial one is one thing, but a moral one is inescapable.
well yes, but we’re already there – we can declare that for them ourselves
Maarten Quivooy has a licence to fudge things or lie on this one because his masters know what is going on and he is safe so long as he continues to deny and lie. The investigation into O’Brien, NZCT, Bluegrass and Infinity is long overdue but at some stage they may wonder how is it ORFU and TTCF dodged a bullet from DIA when information was handed to them on a plate.
On March 6, I took the initiative and contacted the Chris Mantell (SFO lead investigator) and he confirmed he’d neither heard my name of seen any of my evidence. That totally contradicts Quivooy’s claims that those documents and my statement were passed on. I know who I believe.
And what about all the other TTCF grants staff that worked with me who witnessed such arrangements between O’Brien, ORFU and TTCF – how does Quivooy explain why they haven’t been spoken to.
The DIA will come unstuck on this and so might a Minister or two. If after all this, DIA Minister Chris Tremain does not demand a fresh investigation into what two well-resourced Government Regulators, DIA and OAG, have hidden from the public then I’d say he and other Ministers are complicit and that’s corruption!!!
I forgot to mention a fact that will be of considerable interest and relevance to the long suffering ratepayers of Dunedin who bailed out the ORFU to the tune of about $500K. Before the bailout, DCC was briefed by DIA.
It now begs the question – what information did DIA share with DCC – bearing in mind the ORFU /racing /Jokers file was lost between Dec 2010 until August 2012.
Maybe between Mayor Dave Cull and Cr Syd Brown (and their counsel), DCC was able to mentally fill in the gaps, Martin ~!!!!
Mr Brown is a friend of TTCF Trustee Murray Acklin through racing and and the like so if the information wasn’t managed at DIA end it was managed at DCC end.
Not sure I’d want my name associated with Mr Acklin. By now, SFO will have been through the files he had in his Mercedes (in transit from Queenstown) and as raided at his temporary lodgings in a Dunedin motel. Oh dear.
I have just submitted a request under the LGOIA to the DCC asking for copies of all relevant discussions between the DIA and DCC concerning the ORFU and the ORFU / Jokers Bars in Auckland re the obtaining of funding via these establishments for the purposes of funding ORFU activities. This is pertinent in view of the fact that the DCC did commit rate payers to forgiving the ORFU some $480,000 in debt owed to the DCC.
Martin Legge at The Standard
http://thestandard.org.nz/pokies-and-corruption/#comment-612138
(see other comments)
It is illuminating to look at Martin Legge’s comments on the website above and then to read the responses to them. Especially regarding amateur rugby’s reliance on pokies. I have come to a conclusion, based on the thick end of twenty years as an amateur rowing club committee member and president that all this ‘free’ money ex-pokies and SPARC etc is not helpful to amateur sports clubs, it is actually toxic to them.
Free money does two things to amateur clubs. Firstly, it allows the active members to dispense with the wider groups of associated and older members who used to do the support work and pay the bills. While this is initially by choice, it very rapidly becomes a dependency once the wider club communities have dispersed. It is rarely a definitive choice by the active members – Dispensing with the older members simply takes the form of an introverted obsession of the active members, and increasingly the committees that represent them, with their own activities and performance indicators – A thing that free money allows. The wider club communities, disenfranchised and ignored, simply have nothing to retain the level of interest that is required to support their continued input, and they turn their attention to other things. This non-active membership declines simultaneously, reduces non-pokie income and increases cash costs.
Along with the lack of attention and respect for their wider membership, free money brings a lack of attention to and respect for club equipment. The easy money and the absence of older members who had to raise the money to buy the gear the hard way both contribute to this. When I learnt how to row, the boats were fragile wooden shells that had to be handled and maintained with great care. The boat on which I cut my racing teeth in the mid 1970s had a hull that consisted of a single thickness of cedar around 1/8 of an inch thick. She was in perfect working order – and the ‘crusties’ made sure that she stayed that way – One way that they did this was by ensuring the younger members had excellent boat drill, borne of an understanding of the gear and of its value.
Her name was ‘Diamond Jubilee’, and she had been built for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Her sister ‘Golden Jubilee’, built ten years earlier, was still in operation in the Club. These boats would last barely a couple of years in today’s environment. This kind of thing adds to costs too.
When a sport gets really revved up on free money as rowing in this country has done, then the processes outlined above can lead to the amateur side of the game ending up being pretty much entirely eliminated outside of the ‘performance pyramid’ that has a handful of Olympians at its summit. Rowing in this country is an imposing looking structure, but it would die in days if the oxygen of external cash was cut off. I, for one, do not think that this is a good outcome for anyone, except for the occasional millionaire that the performance pyramid produces.
As a ‘crustie’ myself these days, I suspect that amateur rowing and amateur rugby have similar narratives over the last twenty years. Like many other ‘crusties’ I have finally walked away from heavy involvement in my sport after four decades. My break point was the discharge without conviction a couple of years back of the then CEO of Rowing New Zealand after he had pleaded guilty to a string of charges involving the creation of multiple fake documents from multiple organisations including RNZ relating to transactions that involved multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of pokie money. During the protracted legal proceedings, the CEO was the lucky recipient of many endorsements from among others the individual who presided over the board of RNZ, and multiple high profile beneficiaries of the high performance pyramid that had in its turn benefitted from these activities. It made me want to puke.
That’s a fair summation Rob. And yes, the comments at The Standard range from the completely naive to the knowing. It always surprises me how many New Zealanders think people (in society and public service) get to certain stations by hard work rather than the near feudal system of grab-dom on the blatant sly.
How DIA recruits…
http://www.seek.co.nz/Job/13-133-senior-investigator-regulatory-investigations/in/auckland-auckland-central/24244769
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We’re told:
“Multi vacancies across the country and its not because they are growing. Have a look at the hype in the job decription and I think you’ll see just how far ahead of itself the public service has become. Next these guys will be carrying 44 magnums.”
Steve Kilgallon, a respected investigative journalist for the Sunday Star Times, responsible for exposing many pokie rorts in NZ over many years, has cut me in on what he was told “on the record” by the DIA Gambling Head, Maarten Quivooy as part of the “lost file” story featured in SST last week. Kilgallon said I could use it as I see fit because he has had a gutsful of DIA. It followed DIA responses to his questions to which Kilgallon advised DIA risked being made to look daft. Maarten Quivooy then went on the record with this statement. It’s only a shame it was not published in the article:
What does “not tagged to an individual” mean from the head of a Government Regulatory Agency, responsible for applying proper investigative techniques and the laws of evidence. Does it imply DIA forwarded the information but before doing so removed our names and our signatures from our statements and removed the addressees of all damning emails and budgets between TTCF, ORFU and Mike O’Brien. Just remember DIA’s own files record that they lost the ORFU/Jokers file and therefore record it was not investigated properly.
The Head of SFO, Chris Mantell, confirmed in March that he’s never heard of me or seen any of my evidence. What is more concerning is the fact that he confirmed that this is still a DIA enquiry with DIA’s Debbie Despard in charge. Despard is the same person that encouraged her staff to get a whistleblower but when it became political, she felt it best for her career to slowly ignore and discredit the evidence provided by the whistleblower. Now she has the audacity to front an enquiry that has all the hallmarks of selectively targeting individuals while at the same time cleverly removing any links to TTCF or ORFU.
Mike O’Brien and racing clubs may deserve what they get, but least the public forget as I am sure DIA want you to, those individuals could not have captured the $$millions in grants without the complicity of those with a higher and legal responsibility for those community funds, TTCF and all other pokie trusts.
One must ask how it is DIA Minister, Chris Tremain, remains satisfied with his Department.
Simple really. Corruption!!
I think corruption is too harsh a word. Being a bit picky about language, and language inflation destroying the value of words, I’d like to see more differentiation.
Sometimes there are too many issues (or household jobs, to put it into my own situation) all in need of attention. That’s how the fridge ends up with odd saucers of strange leftovers unidentifiable as the plastic pottles of unlabelled mysteries in the freezer. Sometimes all you have time, and attention, to do is ignore ignorable niggles, making a mental note to look into them as soon as you have time – meantime a steady procession of “NOW! NOW!!!” comes along.
The difficulty is, for the rest of us – how do we make a loud enough “NOW! NOW!!!” shout to shift issues to the top of the queue? We’re competing with thousands of others who are bellowing the same cry, and opposed by those who sing soothing, “Don’t worry, we’re dealing with it” lullabies. And even cabinet ministers need their sleep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_New_Zealand#The_SFO_view
An extract from the above link:
The Ombudsman
The first New Zealand Ombudsman was appointed in 1962. The Ombudsman’s role is to ensure citizens receive ‘fair play’ in their dealings with government entities. Over the years the powers of the Office have been extended to include education and hospital boards (from 1968), local government agencies (1975) and in 2005, all crown entities.[114]
In 1983, the Ombudsman was also given the role of monitoring responses to requests under the Official Information Act. This has become an increasingly significant part of its role – to such an extent that the office is beginning to struggle with a surge in complaints. In 2011–12, over 1230 OIA complaints were received – up 25 per cent on the previous year and the highest in 11 years.[115] In September 2012, the chief Ombudsman, Beverley Wakem, said her Office doesn’t receive sufficient funding to hire the staff required to deal with the workload leading one editor to suggest the Ombudsman was deliberately being “starved of the funds it needs to do its work properly”.[116]
Ms Wakem also said Government agencies are increasingly trying to keep information secret or were trying to seek exemption from the Act. She believes the OIA helps maintain transparency in the public sector, and people – including those in government – often underestimated the importance of freedom of information in limiting corruption. Victoria University media law lecturer, Steven Price, agreed that the free flow of information permitted under the OIA was a “vital cog in our democracy”.
Remember, both the DIA and OAG advised me they’d conducted thorough and robust enquiries and reviews into all matters raised. Three years later when the files are disclosed I find the DIA lost the file about TTCF’s arrangements with ORFU/Racing and Jokers bars and still they try and fudge it. I used the words “spinning me bullshit”.
Hypo; download the Wikipedia reference that Martin posted. Read it in its entirety, and be afraid. Very afraid.
“150 times more tax fraud in New Zealand than welfare fraud[49] – but those who commit welfare fraud are more likely to go to prison.” Hmmm.
And in view of the “big fish” who have recently been turning up in the net, it’s amazing how much time is devoted to putting small businesses, including solo tradesmen, through the finest sieve looking for irregular dollars while five minutes’ drive across town there is major fiddling involving many thousands, thousands of thousands. It’s a very time-consuming process for the small trader or tradey, and during it the nits picked seem to the average person using up far more time than they’re worth, time that could be used in much more productive endeavour. Including the rooting out of major cheats and well-dressed thieves – but as usual it’s a case of make busy with the easy targets, look like you’re on task, leave the hard jobs for someone else. With any luck you’ll be retired or working somewhere else before the pressure comes on from higher up to investigate the well-organised, thoroughly professional rorts.
Another quote from the wikipedia article above – “One of the most well known cases of police corruption in New Zealand was that of Arthur Allan Thomas. Thomas was convicted twice for murdering Harvey and Jeanette Crewe after two detectives, Bruce Hutton and Len Johnston, planted a cartridge case in the garden of the house where the murders were committed to secure a conviction against him.”
I had a comment in today’s ODT online regarding the astonishing – and revealing – tribute paid to that national disgrace in human form Det. Inspector Bruce Hutton:
Complaint lodged with Oxford Dictionary
I cannot believe that it is anything other than appalling slackness on the part of the editors. Having read “Deputy Commissioner Bush said Mr Hutton was known as having “integrity beyond reproach” ” I checked the words integrity and reproach. The definitions given were the same as what I had always believed those words to mean. New usage of old words starts with the young and marginal and special interest subgroups, by the time they reach the mainstream such as formal use by senior high ranking personnel I expect them to be in the dictionary………….
Martin Legge reports “both the DIA and OAG advised me they’d conducted thorough and robust enquiries and reviews into all matters raised. Three years later when the files are disclosed I find the DIA lost the file about TTCF’s arrangements with ORFU/Racing and Jokers bars and still they try and fudge it.” The dictionary hasn’t caught up with current usage of thorough, robust, enquiries, reviews and all. Or perhaps the explanation is that NZ English is deviating from English usage in other English-speaking countries at an unprecedented rate.
I sent a post to the ODT on the subject of Arthur Alan Thomas and the apalling state of affairs regarding the laudatory comments of Hutton by the current Dep Commissioner. As per usual with the ODT, abridgements made but not noted.
But the facts remain.
Hutton and his cop mate for reasons best known to themselves – and they are now both dead – decided that Thomas was guilty of the Crewe murders. Despite a wealth of conflicting evidence that showed Thomas didn’t have anything to do with the murders, these two bent cops went to the Crewe property and planted the cartridge case which was the key incriminating factor in making sure Thomas was found guilty.
The Commission of Enquiry found that these two cops did this. It is a fact and not in dispute.
But the NZ Police despite this, have not solved the Crewe murder case – despite many of the past and existing Police sill believing that Thomas got off on some technicality. Thomas didn’t do the murders – so who did? No-one according to the Police.
The Police have also taken 30 odd years to come up with the results of their own internal investigation as to the conduct of the bent cops. They have simply waited until they were both dead and can now say that it doesn’t matter any more. Bullshit it doesn’t matter. Thomas is clearly not a man that is either well or fully able to push his own case. At the time, he was assessed by many as a simple country guy with perhaps limited mental abilities. An easy victim in other words.
We have seen a high number of high profile cases where the Police conduct has been found wanting and a number of cases where the Police have manufactured evidence or concealed evidence. The Bain case continues onwards with on-going unanswered criticism of the amateur Police work at the scene, destruction of evidence, and the burning of the house. The Sounds murders where Scott Watson was found guilty – the book on this murder by Hunter called Trial by Trickery has never been challenged by the Police despite the damning accusations made within it.
Yes, Police, like anyone else can make mistakes, but what is being discussed here is the wilful diversion of justice by those whose job it was to act honestly. What is disastrous is the actions of the Police who simply don’t accept the facts or reality. Hutton was a bent cop and he is being lauded still by the NZ Police. That is unacceptable.
Special thanks, Russell, for your words here.
Another interesting book that has gone unchallenged by the police, was the book written I think by an ex Dunedin Police man. I stand to be corrected but I think his name was Trevor Lewis, and it exposed the goings on here in Dunedin, which is quite an eye opener, and well worth a read. it covered such things in Dunedin as some one who was alleged to have taken a shot at the Queen while she was here, and some rather obscene activities that were covered up. Some one out there maybe able to remember the name of the book. Can anybody help?
Tom Lewis was the police officer.
http://www.presscouncil.org.nz/display_ruling.php?case_number=2015
Thanks for that Elizabeth. Yes Tom Lewis and his book Cover ups and cop outs. Well worth a read. I remember at the time that there was a waiting list at the library for this book.
Yes, avidly read such publications when observing case workings in play of the CIB that earlier had ‘looked after’ the Bain case. They wrote a nice letter thanking me for providing the information that led to (meaty) prosecution; information they struggled to find for themselves despite technical surveillance. A school girl could have worked it out… Eye-opener for me, as to divisions of clotville at Central.
Pays to google Investigate magazine’s coverage of the activities of the Dunedin community round the sex ring case mentioned by Tom Lewis in his book. Again the thing that is intriguing is the fact that all these allegations were published and NO-ONE has taken legal action against those making the allegations despite their seriousness. Just like all those connected with the ORFU pokie rorts – the advice they clearly get and take is to just tuck your head in and it will all blow away. The difference now is that social media can circulate things that the dear old Oddity would prefer not to have mentioned.
Investigate magazine
To Serve & Protect: June 07 (published August 14, 2007)
http://www.thebriefingroom.com/archives/2007/08/to_serve_and_pr.html
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[note the mention of ex Labour Minister David Benson-Pope in the opening paragraph – Mr DP was our independent planning commissioner and chair of the DCC Hearings Committee at Veggie Boys’ resource consent hearing on Wednesday morning this week… small worlds]
https://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/fresh-veggies-a-holiday-mystery/
https://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/dunedin-developers-stoop-to-resource-consents-instead-of-private-plan-change-applications/
Great book. There does seem to still be copies in the Dunedin Public Library.
There is at least one copy in the Reading Room [Reed collection] but only one other copy I think and that was somewhere like Waikouaiti. I found the copies in the CODC libraries had all “vanished” from their shelves. But I did track down a copy through TradeMe.
Seems amazing to me that while this book, the various books on the Arthur Allan Thomas case and more latterly the book on the Sounds murders all pull no punches in naming a number of members of the Police who in the views of the authors are as bent as the criminals they are supposed to be catching, no action seems to have been taken by these named officers in disputing what is alleged in the books, but often the books just seem to become unobtainable. Very interesting.
What is compelling is that many of these officers are still running things the way they want to, and despite being publicly proved to be bent in the cast of the Thomas/Crewe case, many of the current Police still believe that Thomas got away with it and have refused to get out of their erroneous position and do some actual investigation instead of trying to find or construct evidence to support their false positions. Not the sort of actions to inspire confidence at all methinks. Not at all enhanced by the stupid statements made at the funeral of Hutton by the Deputy Commissioner of Police. Hutton was proved to be bent and guilty of planting evidence but was still held up as a shining example of a good cop. Puh-leeese!
People in authority, who may not necessarily be crooked as such, can also fall into the trap of ‘sticking by their (crooked) mate’ out of misplaced loyalty and making excuses for him/her.
We all meet ‘loveable, charming rogues’ in our lives, but you don’t have to turn a blind eye to their actions. ‘Loving the sinner, but not the sin’ has some religious/humanitarian merit, to be sure, but the sin has to be attended to first.
I think this is where people, like Dave Cull, and those others who do not seek accountability…..that goes hand in hand with transparency…. fall down and come up with banalities like ‘not relitigating the past’.
Do we now, for example, apply this philosophy to the likes of Swann and Co? Forgive and forget? Too early for that, I say.
Bit of a giggle!
Sunday, 16 June 2013 11:53 a.m.
Hype O’Thermia supplied this link, saying “Remind you of anything?”
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2013/06/15/hmrc-investigate-googles-taxes-by-googling-googles-taxes/
Search engine term (16.6.13):
dialeaks.wordpress
See post: Audit NZ and OAG clean bill of health —Suspicious! (29.6.13)