Donation complaint goes to SFO
Bridges and Ross both deny playing part in splitting of $100,000 for National coffers
National Party leader Simon Bridges and MP Jami-Lee Ross have both denied having anything to do with a $100,000 donation made to the party which allegedly came in to party coffers broken into smaller amounts of under $15,000 each.
The dispute between Ross and his former leader reared its head again yesterday when, with no warning, police announced they had referred the matter to the Serious Fraud Office.
Police and the SFO revealed the move minutes before National MPs began their weekly caucus meeting.
The news, which neither Bridges nor Ross was told about beforehand, pleased Ross, who is now the independent MP for Botany.
Ross, who quit and was kicked out of the National caucus last year, complained to police in October about what he alleged was a $100,000 donation to the party from businessman Yikun Zhang that was split into smaller sums to hide it.
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by Zhang.
Ross said Bridges and party general manager Greg Hamilton knew about the donation being split up.
Bridges said his hands were clean. He repeated he had not told anyone to break up the $100,000 donation, nor had he said anything that could have been interpreted that way.
“I’ve seen the statement [from police]. On the face of it, it seems to be about the National Party,” he said.
“The SFO is investigating. I think there’s questions for them to answer and you’d hope in due course they’ll do that.”
He did not have concerns about the National Party as he believed the donation had been handled lawfully.
A party spokesman said neither president Peter Goodfellow nor Hamilton had any comment at this stage.
Ross laid his complaint with police in a blaze of publicity after he fell out with his party over claims he leaked details of Bridges’ travel expenses.
The dispute deepened when he was accused of harassing women, and an affair with fellow National MP Sarah Dowie was revealed.
He said yesterday that he was pleased his complaint had been passed to the SFO.
“I took my concern to New Zealand Police because I felt a $100,000 donation that was offered to Simon Bridges on the 21st of May was not handled appropriately.”
He said some media reports that he had broken up the donation into smaller amounts were incorrect.
“The funds, before it entered National Party accounts, came in in amounts smaller than the $15,000 disclosure threshold. The $100,000 donation was offered directly by the donor to Bridges.”
Ross said he was unconcerned that he might be liable for prosecution himself.
“Every time that I’ve been told that I was wrong or baseless, I’ve come up with some evidence or some information. This just shows that there are some serious issues there around donations in the National Party that should be investigated properly.”
Ross said Bridges had to realise he was the party leader.
“I was not there on the 21st of May. Peter Goodfellow was not there on the 21st of May. The donation was made to the leader of the National Party and his involvement, he has to answer,” Ross said.
Otago law professor and electoral law expert Andrew Geddis said there were several reasons why the police might have referred the case to the SFO and several areas in which wrongdoing could have taken place.
He said the referral itself did not mean the SFO would investigate — it was SFO procedure to assess any such referral and decide for itself whether it warranted further investigation and fell within its ambit.
Geddis said police could have referred it because it was too complex for them to assess whether there had been wrongdoing and they wanted the SFO to analyse it.