Telecom embroiled in political donations mystery

The Electoral Commission wants Labour and National to explain why they have not declared political donations of $70,000 from Telecom.

Commission chief executive Helena Catt said she learned of the donations late yesterday afternoon and was seeking answers.

Telecom's annual report lists donations in the past year of $70,000 each to National and Labour and $10,000 to United Future.

The rules say parties must list donations over $10,000. They can list them as from secret trusts or as anonymous to protect donors.

Dr Catt said Labour and National had listed a number of anonymous donations and Telecom might have made the donations through anonymous channels. That would mean an investigation into why the donations were declared by Telecom and not by the parties, she said.

"If we believed it was a false donation return, we are duty-bound to refer it to the police, but we are a long way from drawing that conclusion."

The official donation register shows the bulk of National's $1.88 million declarable donations came through six secret trusts. The largest was $1.25 million from the Waitemata Trust. Labour reported just over $300,000 of "anonymous" donations in its total of $930,000.

Donations from several companies were made public. Sky City gave $60,000 each to National and Labour and $12,000 each to Act and the Progressives. Westpac gave $30,000 each to National and Labour. Toll NZ gave them $25,000 apiece.

National Party president Judy Kirk said last night that she was personally unaware of any Telecom donation but would check this weekend.

Her Labour counterpart, Mike Williams, could not be reached for comment.

Telecom spokesman John Goulter said the company made anonymous political donations "because we think that is the cleanest way to do it and then we disclose those donations subsequently in our annual report".