Martin Matthews was head of the Ministry of Transport in the years that one of its senior staff, Joanne Harrison, stole $750,000 from the taxpayer using false invoices made out to non-existent companies. She was found guilty in February and jailed for four years and three months. Documents released since she was convicted show that ministry staff had been alerting Matthews to her suspicious activities as early as 2013.
It was not until April 2016 that he became concerned and called in the Serious Fraud Office.
Until then he had continued to regard her as "an able high-performing member" of the ministry's leadership team and there have been suggestions staff who raised earlier concerns about her lost their jobs for it. Yet on February 1 this year Matthews became New Zealand's Auditor-General, the office responsible for monitoring the probity of the public service.
The office is responsible to Parliament and his appointment was approved by party leaders, some of whom later claimed they would not have done so had they known the questions being asked about his oversight of the Ministry of Transport when Harrison was stealing money.
In May, after agitation by Labour MP Sue Moroney in particular, Matthews stood down and wrote to the Speaker of Parliament asking for an independent review of his handling of complaints about Harrison.
