Leak arouses importer's anger

By ELLEN READ

An Auckland plasterboard importer is angry after a blunder by the Ministry of Economic Development caused commercially sensitive information about his business to be e-mailed to competitors.

Kevin van Hest, whose company Sigma Agencies imports plasterboard from Thailand, wants compensation but cannot afford to fight for it.

"I've been weakened so much I can't throw any money at lawyers," he said.

"I've got too much money to get legal aid but not enough to fight it. And how do I quantify my injury?"

The claim arises from a series of reports the ministry wrote on anti-dumping charges applied to imported plasterboard.

The ministry said that without the protection of an anti-dumping duty, the New Zealand industry would suffer material injury.

This led to a long-running series of assessments and reviews to determine how to apply the duties and at what level.

It was during one of these reviews that Mr van Hest says the mistake was made.

Between September 1999 and last November, the ministry e-mailed at least seven documents to the involved parties: Sigma, Winstone, importer CTS Quality Building Products and the two Thai exporters.

Mr van Hest said the e-mails contained tables setting out commercially sensitive information about his company that, although blanked out, could be opened with a right mouse-click.

He was unaware of this until the ministry rang him in November to ask him to destroy all the copies.

"The ministry said, 'Look, we made a big mistake. We're very, very sorry. Can you burn, destroy, delete all those copies and we're going to issue new ones'," said Mr van Hest.

Sigma had given screeds of information to the ministry, including details of its turnover and overheads, selling prices and an entire customer list.

Mr van Hest said he had relied on the ministry to keep the data confidential.



Sigma destroyed the information but not before giving a copy to its legal advisers.

"I'm not sure this is the end of it. The only loser out of this whole thing is us. [The others] must have known [how to view the tables] because they gave no extra information to the ministry; nothing that was spreadsheetable," Mr van Hest said.

The ministry would not say who had alerted it to the mistake, he said.

Rory McLeod, the ministry's trade remedies manager, confirmed that the confidential information had been sent - not only to parties involved but also posted on its website.

The information was not freely available as a special command was needed to view it, he said.

Mr McLeod would not comment on whether the ministry would discuss compensation.

'I can't see for what. We are satisfied the issue is resolved."

Winstone's development director, David Brown, said the company's lawyers had alerted it to the viewable tables.

The lawyers could also have contacted the ministry.

He said the issue was a "non-event." His company had destroyed the documents as the ministry requested.

"We're happy with the process that's been followed and haven't viewed anything we shouldn't."