Ex-Green MP Golriz Ghahraman pleaded guilty to four shoplifting charges in Auckland District Court today.
Video / Dean Purcell / Cameron Pitney
Supermarket never reported alleged shoplifting directly to police;
Total value of goods believed to be less than $150;
Police sought to use allegation in High Court case, Herald told.
The supermarket at the centre of claims that former MP Golriz Ghahraman was shoplifting again never reported the incident directly to police, sparking questions about how authorities came to learn of the incident.
The Herald has spoken to multiple sources familiar with the case and has also learned police tried to introduce the alleged incident into the High Court hearing where Ghahraman was seeking to have her sentence on four counts of shoplifting overturned in favour of a discharge without conviction.
It has also emerged that Ghahraman was confronted before she even reached the checkout – a detail one leading lawyer says would make it very difficult to prove she was shoplifting because she had yet to have a chance to pay for the goods.
Ghahraman has not responded to requests for comment.
If police discovered the matter via the surveillance network co-ordinated through the Auror platform, officers would have found the alleged supermarket incident – involving what the Herald was told was less than $150 in goods – out of around 20,000 shoplifting reports made every year by Pak’nSave’s owner, Foodstuffs.
The revelation of a new alleged shoplifting incident came from Auckland restaurateur Leo Molloy in a social media video and led to a fresh wave of online abuse against the former MP.
Leo Molloy
He has said in a subsequent social media post after the claim was confirmed: “That comes as no surprise to us but let’s just leave it there because I’m a bit worried about her mental health.”
Ghahraman had previously been the target of sustained online hate, initially over her political views and then over shoplifting clothing from a high-end fashion store for which she was convicted last year. This led to her resignation as an MP and the end of her political career.
The Herald has been told by sources that the alleged incident at the Royal Oak Pak’nSave took place in the weeks before she was due to appear at the High Court in Auckland in mid-October.
‘Low-level’ alleged shoplifting
Ghahraman was believed to have been watched on CCTV placing items in a shopping trolley or into a tote bag that was in the trolley when she was stopped by security and asked to empty her bags.
At that stage, the Herald understands, Ghahraman had not been through the checkout or left the store – and told security she intended to pay for the goods she had chosen. She then left the store without the goods.
The Herald understands Ghahraman had about a dozen items with a value of less than $150 – what Foodstuffs has described to the Herald as “low-level”.
The incident was put into the Auror system to which Foodstuffs, other supermarkets, service stations, shopping malls and big box retailers subscribe which logs and data-matches alleged retail crime.
Green Party member Golriz Ghahraman in Parliament before her resignation. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Auror provides a crime-reporting platform that operates as a nationwide surveillance system including facial recognition software, licence plate recognition and an information-sharing platform to which police have access.
A Foodstuffs spokesperson confirmed the company did not proactively make a complaint to police.
The spokesperson said: “We ask our store teams to log every incident of shoplifting into our retail crime reporting platform which is then made visible to the police who determine what to do next. For low-level offending like you’ve described, we don’t engage directly with the police.”
In logging the incident, the allegation against Ghahraman joined around 20,000 other reports made by Foodstuffs to the Auror system each year.
The Herald has learned the report of the case emerged just before Ghahraman’s appearance in the High Court at Auckland.
She was seeking to appeal her sentence – a fine of $1600 – which followed her pleading guilty to four counts of shoplifting after thefts of high-end clothing worth around $9000. She was seeking a discharge without conviction, which had been opposed at the district court level.
Senior police officer investigating
The Herald has learned that just before the case was heard on October 13, police unsuccessfully sought to include information about the new allegation in the appeal hearing.
It is unclear how many hours have been put into the investigation since then by the detective senior sergeant assigned to the shoplifting case.
Police have refused to answer questions about the shoplifting allegations, their investigation or the attempt to include the matter in the High Court case.
A police spokesperson said: “Police are continuing to investigate a shoplifting complaint. No charges have been laid at this stage, and we are limited in further public comment while the complaint is being investigated.”
Golriz Ghahraman the year she was elected to Parliament.
The Herald asked how the matter came to be leaked. The spokesperson said: “A number of external parties have knowledge of this matter. Police is not aware of the source of commentary on social media.”
Barrister Graeme Edgeler said it was highly unlikely that the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard would be reached for someone who was not actively hiding goods and had yet to move beyond the checkout.
“If she never left the store … makes it harder to prove [she acquired the goods illegally] and more likely police won’t take it further.
Edgeler said it would be easier to prove the allegation of shoplifting if the person with the goods had left the store with them without paying.
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.
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