Party: Rookie error led to charges
Accusations of failure to declare $200,000 in donations not serious offence, says NZ People’s Party leader
ANew Zealand political party’s general secretary has been charged over failing to properly declare more than $200,000 in donations.
Police charged New Zealand People’s Party general secretary Anil Kumar Sharma with breaching the Electoral Act by failing to correctly file details of significant donations with the Electoral Com- mission. The charges were filed in the Auckland District Court last Friday, while the case will be heard again this month.
A party secretary must file a return for every party donation exceeding $30,000, including when aggregated with all previous donations from the donor in the past 12 months. A return must be filed within 10 working days of the party secretary receiving the donation.
Four of the five donations, totalling $206,000, were made before last year’s general election and had expiry dates for notice of the donation being given between August 21 and September 26 — the day before the election. The largest single donation was $52,000.
A $36,000 donation to the party was made after the election and had an expiry date of November 1.
Party leader and founder Roshan Nauhria told the Herald the party had made a mistake: “The money was all paid through banking systems, there was no cash or anything. We made a mistake . . . it’s not that we’ve committed any wrongdoing.”
He said the public wasn’t affected by the late notice and it was “not a serious offence . . . There’s nothing wrong, the return was filed late. I don’t see any problem there.
“I don’t think anything will happen,” he said of the case.
In June, Nauhria said late disclosure of donations he made to the party was due to a rookie mistake. He had donated $260,000 in 18 separate donations to his party between July and October last year but the sum was not disclosed until the party lodged its annual return this year.
Nauhria stood as a candidate and finished third in the 2016 Mt Roskill byelection.
The party was formed in 2015 and last year gained just under 1890 votes. Nauhria has said he intends to keep it going for the 2020 election.
The People’s Party target voter base is mainly migrant voters and its focus was law and order after a spate of aggravated dairy robberies and taxi-driver muggings.