KEY POINTS:
Last week, Michael Fay (through the Midavia Rail company) and David Richwhite had to return $20 million to ordinary New Zealanders to settle insider-trading allegations. Winston Peters has hounded these men for years, and on Monday he was proven correct.
A couple of decades ago, Peters strode the political stage as the unchallenged people's popular choice for prime minister. With Michael Laws as his Svengali, he took on the powerful corporate barons that Roger Douglas et al had unleashed on our society. The 15 years after 1984 was a time of unfettered turbo-capitalist greed, where former wide boys and hucksters became overnight squillionaires by feasting at the public trough.
Most of us didn't quite know how these masters of the universe were amassing their fortunes, but we were assured by fawning media articles that they were working in the best interests of New Zealand. We were even told with a straight face by the Rogernomes in the government that all the public money flowing to these barons was good for us. Apparently, the richer these guys got, the more money would trickle down to the rest of us peasants, and all would be well.
But, after the best of our family silver was sold to these guys for a song, we started to cotton on that we were being fleeced. But the heads of the Serious Fraud Office and the Inland Revenue assured us there wasn't anything dodgy going on, so we couldn't quite pin down why we thought we were being suckered. Those of us who opposed this nonsense from the start were labelled the "loony left" and marginalised as malcontents. To take our attention away from these crimes, we had Fay entertain us by bringing us the America's Cup. I suppose it was a modern version of the Roman emperors providing gladiator sports to the masses. New Zealand was enthralled with Prince Michael, and even when he tried to rort the America's Cup rules, we lauded him for his genius, rather than admitting that his actions were sneaky and underhand. In fact, we got so carried away, we made Fay a knight of the realm.
In this new era of excess and greed, there were only two politicians prepared to take them on: Jim Anderton from Labour and Winston Peters from National. Both men were touted as future leaders of their prospective parties and as future prime ministers. Of the two, Peters was the more vocal in his opposition against corporate criminals, accusing the business icons of being self-serving. There didn't seem to be a week that went by without another bombshell of corruption or dodgy dealings at the highest level.
Peters had an ongoing battle with Fay and Richwhite, accusing them of every sin imaginable. Peters' highest profile case against them was the infamous Winebox case, where he accused them and their cronies of an elaborate tax evasion scam.
Eventually, Fay and Richwhite had had enough and slunk off to Switzerland.
On Monday, the Securities Commission vindicated Peters by forcing Richwhite to pay out $20 million after he was charged with insider trading. Specifically, knowing as a director of Tranz Rail what was the financial situation of the company, he sold Tranz shares held by one of his companies. This little manoeuvre netted him and Fay a tidy $63 million.
They thought they had got away with it, but Peters never gave up. Richwhite's lawyers, Bell Gully, put out an oily statement trying to spin their client out of it. But no one who has followed this case was buying it.
On Tuesday, Peters strode into Parliament and let fly.
Peters called both men robbers, accusing them of an insatiable greed, and claimed that they had corrupted New Zealand politics and our politicians. He accused National politicians of protecting their mates and pointed out that it was the first time anyone in officialdom had done anything about these two men "who just robbed this country blind; transaction after transaction after transaction". National MPs in Parliament kept their heads down. None of them is stupid enough to take Peters on when he's on a roll.
He reminded us of their involvement in the Bank of New Zealand, where the taxpayer had to bail it out to the tune of $1 billion.
Fay and Richwhite donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to both National and Labour.
Peters' accusations of complicity of agencies such as the Serious Fraud Office do have some validity, when evidence is pretty overwhelming that tens of millions of dollars had been ripped off. Yet, he pointed out, the SFO spent its time shipping people like former Act MP Donna Awatere Huata off to jail, when the sum of money she pinched was tiny in comparison.
Also disturbing is that the investigators were told that if they pursued the case against Fay and Richwhite, their careers would be damaged.
Labour's great new hope, Shane Jones, showed his mettle when he said that Fay should go to jail and have his knighthood taken from him. But if Jones is serious, he should follow through.
This whole business stinks to high heaven. There is enough evidence that serious white-collar crimes have been committed here. A full commission of inquiry should be set up by Parliament to get to the bottom of why these corporate barons and their political accomplices were allowed to steal millions from the people.
