Jared Savage

Jared Savage in the NZ Herald reveals more information about the dodgy decision to fast track Bill Liu’s citizenship by ministers and MPs in the Labour party.

I can’t hardly wait for the report of the Auditor-General:

Emails obtained under the Official Information Act reveal a senior Immigration NZ investigator wrote to Mr Ross after learning of the decision.

Russell Ogilvy asked whether Mr Ross recommended that citizenship be declined and whether he had told Mr Jones “to speak with his own department regarding the decision”.

Mr Jones was the Acting Internal Affairs Minister in this case but also the Associate Immigration Minister.

“The minister was advised of both the pending police and INZ investigations,” responded Mr Ross.

Despite his recommendation, Mr Jones granted citizenship subject to Mr Liu taking the oath of allegiance.

Mr Ogilvy then asked Mr Ross to tell him when the citizenship ceremony would be held.

The emails also reveal that Mr Jones granted Mr Liu an urgent private ceremony at the request of Labour MP Dover Samuels, despite the advice of another DIA official that he did not meet the criteria.

Mr Samuels also wrote three earlier letters lobbying for Mr Liu’s citizenship application.

The VIP ceremony was held in a room at Parliament days after Mr Jones’ decision in his favour.

The next day he applied for an urgent passport, then changed his name to William Yan.

The media is now belatedly starting to realise that Bill Liu is seriously dodgy, that his stories don’t stack up and neither do the excuses of Shane Jones.

Although most media continue to repeat the mistakes of the officials, in underestimating the size of the alleged fraud in China…

The extensive documents at Investigate show that the amounts concerned were far from a few million dollars:

“Yan was charged for accounting frauds and fund embezzlement of public company, the amount was said to be RMB 720 million or 1.08 billion (between NZ$167 million and NZ$257 million).”

Here are today’s stories:

Jared Savage seems to be getting a handle on the stench of this case:

The public servant who handled the citizenship application of a millionaire Chinese businessman with multiple identities was told by his boss to “stop asking questions”, a transcript of court evidence shows.

What sort of pressure was applied to make senior government officials issue orders to stop questioning…that is corruption.

Mr Gambo wanted to make further inquiries with immigration authorities in Australia.

“I had a phone call that I was told not to ask any more questions because there was a lot of political pressure to send the file to Wellington.

“I was told to just process the file, send it to Wellington, don’t worry about asking any more questions.

“I have been working there for seven years and that was the first time I have had my boss phone me about an application.”

Asked who called him, Mr Gambo named the general manager of citizenship, Geoff May.

I’m not sure we even have a statutory body that is able to look into the breadth and depth of these sorts of allegation of corrupt behaviour. Each department has limited purview…the SFO looks at fraud only, the Auditor-General has no oversight of criminal activity, the Police have no oversight of political activity…it really is becoming a bugger’s muddle.

Jared Savage also provides a useful catalogue of the actions, activities and personnel involved in this murky affair.

Andrea Vance and Dana Levy carry claims of signs of torture on Bill Liu…which ironically was contained in a letter to Shane Jones from John Billington, who is also the lawyer for Dover Samuels.

It is really starting to stretch the realms of belief that there was no connection between Shane Jones, Bill Liu, Dover Samuels, and Shane Te Pou and his brother who worked in Shane jones office. The conflicts of interest are glaring and obvious even if Shane Jones cannot see them.

Jared Savage has written an article about benefit fraud. Apparently, shock horror, it has trebled from 5 years ago:

Benefit fraud cost taxpayers a record $22.6 million last year, and nine social welfare staff were sacked for ripping off the system.

Figures released to the Herald under the Official Information Act show fraud detected by the Ministry of Social Development has tripled from $7.5 million five years ago.

At that time, the ministry set up a fraud intelligence unit because of an international trend towards increasingly elaborate scams, including the use of stolen and faked identities, said chief executive Peter Hughes.

The ministry had also been embarrassed by Wayne Patterson, who used 123 fake identities to steal $3.4 million over two years – or $56,000 a fortnight – before he was caught in 2006 and jailed for eight years.

His offending is still the largest benefit fraud – the second largest amount stolen was $571,000 in 2008.

Oh right so it tripled because they are detecting it better…that is a good thing.

However it hasn’t tripled, the fraud has always been there and under Labour there was a dis-inclination to care about it.

But let me tell you…their fraud is quite a bit larger than $22 million. That is only what they publicly admit to. In private the numbers are more like $200 million. The trouble is most of the staff who can do anything about this are wombles who wear grey Julius Marlow double zip shoes, tan knee socks, tan walk shorts and yellow shorts with big lapels, even in summer they ear their grey cardigan with leather buttons. I know this because I have met them.

Back in 2000 their state of the art fraud department consisted of the aforementioned womble and a couple of helpers using state of the art analysis tools like Excel.

Proper data visualisation tools or appropriately designed farud detections suites were and probably still are non-existant. I know this must be the case because otherwise  the cases like Wayne Patterson’s wouldn’t be happening.

Jared Savage has what surely must be the last nail in Adam Feeley’s coffin:

The head of the Serious Fraud Office gave copies of Allan Hubbard’s biography as “booby” prizes at a staff Christmas party while the former Rich Lister was under investigation.

Adam Feeley, the SFO chief executive, gave handcrafted wooden statues to winners at a joke prize-giving last December and paperback editions of “Allan Hubbard: A Man Out of Time” to the runners-up.

At the time, Mr Hubbard’s South Canterbury Finance was in statutory management after a $1.8 billionGovernment bailout and the Timaru accountant was being investigated by the SFO.

Six months after the Christmas party, the SFO laid 50 charges against the 83-year-old, who denied any wrongdoing.

The calls for his resignation are growing:

Pressure has mounted on Mr Feeley this week and yesterday, a top Auckland criminal lawyer called for his resignation over the champagne incident.

“He’s in a position of responsibility and I think he’s shown absolutely poor judgment,” said Criminal Bar Association president Tony Bouchier.

“They had a celebratory drink – that on its own is not so bad, but the SFO really have got to be seen to be absolutely unbiased.”

This latest incident just shows that the culture at the SFO under Adam Feeley has deteriorated significantly. THere can only be one person responsible for that.

Jared Savage at the Herald has gone to the former and longest serving boss of the SFO, David Bradshaw, for comment on Five Fingers Feeley.

“I would never celebrate the laying of charges. When you charge people, you don’t know whether they’re guilty. It’s a different culture.

“To me that whole scenario of ‘hooray, we’ve charged these people’ was a culture I did not want.

“After you charge someone, the court has to deal with the matter and the jury has to make a decision. That’s the system we go through.”

Under his regime, Mr Bradshaw said the SFO would celebrate together each year at Christmas but not to toast any particular investigation.

“[As the SFO director] you’ve always got to be so careful, because you’re in a privileged position.

“Put it this way. It wouldn’t have happened on my watch with the people I had there.

If I’d put an email out like that, I would have been torn apart by the people in the office. It’s a culture thing.

“[The champagne drinking] is frustrating for someone like myself, because it makes the office look silly.”

That is a very good point David Bradshaw has raised. This cowboy was celebrating charges being laid, not a successful prosecution. Now as a result of his cowboy actions he may very well have prejudiced the trial he celebrated.