KEY POINTS:
The Thai tiler at the centre of allegations against Taito Phillip Field plans to sue the Mangere MP for not paying him for work done on the politician's house in Samoa.
Auckland lawyer Olinda Woodroffe told TV3 last night that she plans to file civil proceedings against Mr Field on behalf of Sunan Siriwan.
Mr Siriwan is at the centre of the scandal surrounding the Labour backbencher.
Mr Field faces allegations of immigration irregularities concerning his sponsorship of the Thai man's bid for NZ residency.
The matter is now the subject of a police inquiry and Mr Field is suspended from the Labour Party caucus. Ms Woodroffe told TV3 she planned to instruct a Queen's Counsel to lay the civil proceedings against the MP this week.
"Sixteen months of working for no wages is quite a long time and it's clearly an abuse of power," she said.
"The question is, was he acting at the time as a member of Parliament or was he running a business on the side as a consultant?"
Mr Field's lawyer, Simitiva Perese, told the Herald he would not comment on the matter until something was filed in court.
Mr Perese continued to rebut suggestions that Mr Field was not co-operating with police investigations into his affairs which began in August last year.
"If there is new material that Mr Field in our view ought to properly comment on, he should in due course, but to say that he's not co-operating is not right," he said.
"Mr Field is co-operating in the sense that he will provide documents that are necessary for the inquiry to speed up the inquiry but he refuses to be interviewed at this point."
A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Helen Clark said she was not aware of Ms Woodroffe's intention to lay civil proceedings against Mr Field and would not comment.
