Accclient’s details leaked from email to minister

EITHER ACC or ACC Minister Judith Collins’ office appears to have compounded the breach of privacy suffered by one of the corporation’s clients.

Details about the ACC client – who exposed one of New Zealand’s biggest privacy breaches last week – were leaked from an email National Party insider Michelle Boag sent to Ms Collins.

The leak is likely to be another breach of the client’s privacy because it is understood ACC had no authority to disclose any aspect of the woman’s ACC claim to the media.

Media and privacy specialist lawyer Stephen Price said last night that, if the breach came from the minister’s office or ACC, there would be good grounds for a complaint to be made to the privacy commissioner.

The leaked email was about a meeting in December between senior ACC managers Philip Murch and Hans Verberne, the client and Ms Boag.

Different versions of what was said at the meeting have now emerged. ACC alleged the client threatened to keep a file containing a mass privacy breach she had been sent by ACC and to go public if she was not given a guaranteed benefit payment for two years.

But Ms Boag told the Herald on Sunday that an ACC manager said an agreement on a way for the client to re-establish her business would depend on the privacy breach details being returned to ACC. She confirmed earlier reports that ACC was urged at the meeting to sort out its privacy systems for the sake of the ministry, its board and its chief executive, Ralph Stewart.

ACC was told the mass breach was one of 45 breaches of the client’s details in her nine years as a client, Ms Boag said.

An ACC report for Ms Collins was made public on Friday. It said the corporation had told police about the alleged threats. ACC has yet to explain whether it made a formal complaint to police.

The report also said ACC should have acted sooner when it was alerted to the seriousness of the breach involving private details of more than 6500 clients, including victims of sexual abuse and other violent crime.

The client declined to comment yesterday but on Friday said the report was compiled without ACC speaking to her or Ms Boag. ‘‘The assertions about the [December] meeting are wrong,’’ she said.

An ACC spokeswoman declined to answer questions yesterday about what was said at the December meeting ‘‘till police have had a chance to review’’. She said ACC could not comment on whether it would investigate who leaked information or whether the leak was a breach of privacy.

Ms Collins declined to say whether her office or ACC had breached the client’s privacy, what was said at the meeting, whether she had a meeting transcript from ACC, or if she knew the source of the leak and if she believed Ms Boag or ACC’S account of the meeting.

She had received an email from Ms Boag and had passed it on to ACC, she said.