Auditor-General considering Wong investigation

MP Pansy Wong. File photo / Wairarapa Times-Age

Auditor-General Lyn Provost has confirmed she is considering the latest information around Sammy Wong's possible misuse of his wife Pansy's Parliamentary travel perk, before deciding whether to investigate the matter.

Pressure for an Auditor-General's investigation into taxpayer-funded travel by Pansy and Sammy Wong grew stronger yesterday after fresh information emerged that appears to contradict what Mr Wong told a recent inquiry.

Labour MP Pete Hodgson, who tabled the information in Parliament, said it was likely further details of Mr Wong's trips to China would be revealed in coming days.

"We are keeping an eye on developments to do with Pansy Wong," a spokeswoman for Ms Provost told the Herald, but she was unable to say when a decision would be made whether or not to investigate the matter.

A Parliamentary Services inquiry last week cleared former Cabinet minister Mrs Wong and her husband of any serious misuse of taxpayer-funded travel perks.

The report by former public servant Hugh McPhail found the Wongs breached rules on use of the perk just once by conducting private business during a trip to China in 2008.

It found all other trips to China, where Mr Wong's business interests were limited to a hovercraft company, were taken for personal reasons, including a June 2005 trip to Fujian province he said was taken to search for family roots and meet relatives.

However Mr Hodgson yesterday produced hard copies of a translated Chinese blog which reported on a foundation stone laying ceremony for a new biotechnology campus development in Fujian in June 2005.

The blog reports that Mr Wong was in attendance as was his business partner and former Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, whose company Alpha Group had invested in the $40 million project.

Mr Hodgson later told the Herald the information did not prove Mr Wong conducted business on the trip, but given Mr Wong attended the ceremony the morning after arriving in Fujian, it "strongly suggested" the trip was taken for that purpose.

Although the McPhail report found the trip was taken for genealogical research, "it would seem that Mr Wong ... has not told the whole truth or that if he has, for some reason Mr McPhail didn't report the whole truth".

"It's a piece of evidence that starts to discredit the McPhail report."

Mr Hodgson said he was receiving additional information about the Wongs' travel and would release more when he was convinced of its credibility.

Mrs Wong yesterday said her husband was invited to the Fujian foundation stone-laying ceremony by family friends who were majority shareholders in the project.

"There was no business interest, absolutely not," she told Radio New Zealand.

Mr McPhail yesterday refused to say whether Mr Wong had told him about the Fujian ceremony and would not answer other questions about the matter.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for KiwiRail has told the Herald the company understood that Mr Wong had been engaged by Pacific Power Developments (PPD), a New Zealand registered company with links in China "to arrange meetings in New Zealand for state owned CNR (China North Rail)" in 2005.

CNR's overseas trading arm, CNR Loric later won a contract to supply 20 locomotives to KiwiRail in an agreement signed in June last year.

However Mrs Wong has told the Herald her husband never worked for PPD.