Peters: Any inquiry will clear me

SFO won’t find wrongdoing by party over donations because no such evidence exists, NZ First leader says

NZ First Leader Winston Peters is adamant that any potential probe by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into the New Zealand First Foundation’s handling of donations will clear him, and his party.

Speaking to reporters before heading into the House yesterday afternoon, Peters predicted that the SFO wouldn’t even need to talk to him.

“Guess why?” he asked before answering his question: “I was not involved in any way, shape or form.”

An SFO spokesman said yesterday that it expected to receive a referral from police in relation to the New Zealand First Foundation and would be “assessing the matter”.

Questions were raised last year about how the foundation handled donations. The Electoral Commission said at the time it was looking into the matter.

On Monday, it handed the probe over to the police — the police said they would be handing it to the SFO.

Yesterday afternoon, Peters said he was pleased the matter had been deferred to the police, then to the SFO. But he said NZ First was going to wait and co-operate with the SFO to provide all the information.

“Until that report is in, I have exactly nothing more to say,” he said.

“But one thing,” he continued. “I’m not subject to any investigation here and nor, in that sense, is New Zealand First — so there is the end of it.”

The SFO would not find evidence of wrongdoing because none existed — “we have a legal opinion to back up what we have said. Our job is to co-operate . . . I expect other political parties to do the same as well.”

Peters had previously asked NZ First to co-operate with police over the alleged issue with the foundation.

Pressed on whether this, in and of itself, was an admission of wrongdoing — he said it was not. He had asked the party to go to the police because: “You have all these rumours floating around, we needed to correct them.”

Yesterday he drew a parallel between the foundation saga and some issues he had with the SFO in 2008. Peters — then Minister of Foreign Affairs — stood aside as the SFO investigated issues to do with party donations.

The SFO said at the time it had no basis for fraud charges to be laid, but questions remained about possible breaches of electoral law over the non-disclosure of donations.

“When it was all over,” he said yesterday, “Winston Peters was utterly exonerated — those are the facts.”

He said that would again be the outcome of any potential SFO probe.