Local duo fights global corruption

The last place you might expect to find the headquarters for a global corruption investigation group is small town New Zealand.

But after working in some of the darkest places in the world, Sean and Jaydene Buckley have found an unlikely home among the vines in Blenheim.

Both former detectives, and then UN investigators, the Buckleys now run OSACO Group, one of the only businesses in the world that specialises in independent investigation into corruption, fraud and sexual assault within the humanitarian sector.

Organisations – often NGOS or UN based – come to them with allegations and concerns within their own ranks, most of which are in Africa or the Middle East. With 20 consultants around the world, OSACO investigates and makes findings based on the data they collect.

‘‘The selling point is that we’re only going to report on the facts that we find, we’re not tied to any of the internal politics of an organisation,’’ Sean said.

Many of their investigations have centred around sexual assault allegations, something Sean specialised in as a detective in Christchurch for 20 years. He was one of the lead investigators in the sexual assaults committed by St John of God brothers in Marylands, a Christchurch residential school for boys, and lead the investigation into prolific sex offender Bernard Mcgrath, a prolific predator who operated in the 1970s and 80s.

He took up his first role with the UN in 2005, dealing mostly with cases of child exploitation and sexual assault committed by UN peacekeepers, in places such as Liberia and Somalia.

But after decades in the job, they moved back to New Zealand, where they’d prefer to be. They suspect there’s plenty of fraud and corruption here to keep them busy.

‘‘You talk to most New Zealanders and they’d say there’s virtually no corruption in New Zealand but internationally, what is corruption?’’ he said.

‘‘It’s receiving gifts and gratuities and all the other things that go with it, as well as backhanders and bribery.

‘‘We’re a very naive country when it comes to that.’’

But the methodology for investigations, whether it be political assassinations in Lebanon, or a missing $50 from the finance officer’s top drawer, remains the same.

In December 2017, the OSACO Group investigated allegations of sexual assault committed by Mick Lorenzten from the UN’S World Food Programme, who was then removed.

Buckley went into Afghanistan to investigate and found allegations from staff members, present and former, from all over the globe.

‘‘It was high profile at the time

‘‘[We were] looking at external risks for the All Blacks ... it could be things like illegal gambling groups all around the world trying to find out information, teams potentially spying them, anything that would undermine the way they could perform.’’

The group has 10 projects on the go at any one time – at the moment, they’re in Pakistan, Afghanistan, East Africa, the Congo, the US and Europe. While they prefer to manage projects ‘‘sitting in our shorts under the pagoda’’, they travel out into the field multiple times a year, when someone is needed on the ground.

The Buckleys have uncovered ‘‘horrendous things’’ in many of their projects, but say their drive comes from giving people a voice and uncovering the truth.

‘‘It is quite dark sometimes and it can be quite disconcerting when you see how much money is wasted through theft and the amount of corruption,’’ Jaydene said.

‘‘But at the end of the day, the value for me is being able to get to the root cause of that.

‘‘We might be the only people that turn up and say ‘you’re important and what you have to say is important’.’’

Although it takes two days to get anywhere overseas for a project, it’s a paradise to come home to after the grim and often primitive conditions they return from. And they enjoy the normality and routine of their local gym.

‘‘If you don’t have something that can make you switch off from the dayto-day, you’re not going to last very long,’’ Sean said.

‘‘In today’s world you don’t have to be stuck in London or New York ... everything runs very smoothly from here.’’