| New Zealand Air 'vendetta' costs taxpayers $50,000
By VICTOR. 05/05/2002 At 21:01 Whistle-blowing. Air 'vendetta' costs taxpayers $50,000
05 May 2002
By OSKAR ALLEY
Airways corporation stands accused of squandering nearly $50,000 of taxpayers' money pursuing a legal "vendetta" against a whistle-blowing former employee overseas.
The state-owned enterprise has also admitted using funds to hire a private investigator against another former employee, prompting allegations of wildly inappropriate spending practices by "vengeful" management.
NZ First leader Winston Peters has accused the corporation of "acting like the KGB" while chasing the author of two emails sent to Airways staff, criticising management. A police IT expert is also the subject of a complaint to the Police Complaints Authority, alleging he impersonated a police officer and acted unethically and outside his jurisdiction by helping Airways chase the whistle-blower overseas.
At the centre of the dispute is Airways' former legal counsel Ezequiel Trumper. He left the corporation with a payout worth more than $160,000 in January 2000, after blowing the whistle on three executives who he said stood to personally make $30 million on a British bid.
Trumper's lawyers claim the corporation has tried to "intimidate and harass" him overseas, raising Airways' behaviour with State Owned Enterprises Minister Mark Burton. Trumper left Airways after raising legal concerns about the actions of chief
executive Craig Sinclair - one of the three executives.
Peters used parliamentary privilege to name the trio. His revelations forced the government to call in auditor general David Macdonald to investigate.
Macdonald found the executives had not acted illegally or unethically on the bid to run Britain's air traffic system. Peters denounced Macdonald's findings as "worthless".
Two years after he departed, Trumper says Airways is continuing to persecute him, misusing public money to do so. "The only conceivable explanation for Mr Sinclair's actions . . . was to harass me because of my evidence two years ago," Trumper said.
Burton has refused to
intervene, saying he is comfortable with the corporation's actions. That comment has prompted Trumper to attack Burton's handling of the saga, saying he was "astonished" at the minister condoning the corporation's actions.
Burton has refused to release the evidence he sought from Trumper about Sinclair's behaviour.
Trumper said Burton's handling of the allegations was a disgrace. "The minister should come clean and disclose my evidence, which to his shame, he continues to suppress."
Sinclair confirmed Airways had spent "nearly" $50,000 pursuing legal action in the New South Wales Supreme Court against Trumper's
employer. The corporation successfully sought an order to obtain computer records to try to trace the author of the two emails.
Sinclair said police had traced the "defamatory and malicious" emails to the Sydney firm. He would not comment on whether he believed Trumper was the author of the emails.
But he said other "malicious" emails had been sent to Airways' clients and partners around the world which could affect the company's reputation.
Trumper categorically denies sending any emails to Airways' business partners.
Sinclair said the Airways board knew and approved of the court action.
Despite spending "nearly" $50,000 Sinclair said his corporation had not yet decided if further action would be taken.
But Peters said Sinclair personally was the second plaintiff in the Supreme Court action and so had used taxpayers' money to pursue a "vindictive" attack against Trumper. "This is taxpayers' money they are wasting on a petty, personal attack. That is grounds for dismissal."
Sinclair said his name was added as a plaintiff because it was easier to prove defamation of an individual than of an entire corporation.
He rejected Peters' claims.
Peters said he was outraged at the actions of police IT expert Maarten Kleintjes, who allegedly contacted Trumper's employer in Sydney, describing himself as a police officer conducting a formal police inquiry.
Kleintjes is a non-sworn officer who filed an affidavit on Airways' behalf.
Peters said Kleintjes had no jurisdiction to act on the matter, which was a civil case in Australia.
Trumper's lawyers have laid a PCA complaint against Kleintjes. Police headquarters would not comment.
Burton confirmed he had received complaints about Airways' alleged intimidation and harassment of Trumper but said there was no proof. Airways had not acted improperly and had every right to investigate malicious communications which posed "enormous harm" to its reputation, he said.
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Disgraced former Airways New Zealand CEO Craig Sinclair, despite his abuse of power and authority, and after wasting thousands of dollars, was not challenged by Government, his board, or any other media following his confirmation of the vendetta against a lawyer like Trumper who had simply acted in defence of the public interest by challenging his proven corruption.
How could it be that not a single journalist in New Zealand followed up the exposure of the Sunday Times? Our search in the web for any follow up of this story proved fruitless.
Rumour has it that the Government, desperate to cover up the sinister and probably illegal protection which Minster Burton, whose ineptitude is legendary, conferred to Sinclair put pressure on the only 2 media companies in New Zealand to drop any coverage.
Craig Sinclair, whose career floundered since, was shown the door at Airways New Zealand within weeks of this story made public. The Airways New Zealand did not even issue a perfunctory media release thanking for his services.
Trumper is now a partner in a traditional and prestigious law firm in Sydney. In 2005 he broke his silence on the subject by publishing a personal statement in Scoop (www.scoop.co.nz) denouncing the impunity enjoyed by Craig Sinclair and former Chairman Maasland.
Winston Peters, the maverick MP who exposed Sinclair's corruption in Wellington, is now Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Craig Sinclair is unemployable in the private sector, and remains at another state company, Air NZ, where he was passed over for promotion.
It is clear that the vendetta, for Sinclair, produced exactly the opposite result.
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Disgraced former Airways New Zealand CEO Craig Sinclair, despite his abuse of power and authority, and after wasting thousands of dollars, was not challenged by Government, his board, or any other media following his confirmation of the vendetta against a lawyer like Trumper who had simply acted in defence of the public interest by challenging his proven corruption.
How could it be that not a single journalist in New Zealand followed up the exposure of the Sunday Times? Our search in the web for any follow up of this story proved fruitless.
Rumour has it that the Government, desperate to cover up the sinister and probably illegal protection which Minster Burton, whose ineptitude is legendary, conferred to Sinclair put pressure on the only 2 media companies in New Zealand to drop any coverage.
Craig Sinclair, whose career floundered since, was shown the door at Airways New Zealand within weeks of this story made public. The Airways New Zealand did not even issue a perfunctory media release thanking for his services.
Trumper is now a partner in a traditional and prestigious law firm in Sydney. In 2005 he broke his silence on the subject by publishing a personal statement in Scoop (www.scoop.co.nz) denouncing the impunity enjoyed by Craig Sinclair and former Chairman Maasland.
Winston Peters, the maverick MP who exposed Sinclair's corruption in Wellington, is now Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Craig Sinclair is unemployable in the private sector, and remains at another state company, Air NZ, where he was passed over for promotion.
It is clear that the vendetta, for Sinclair, produced exactly the opposite result.
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This story shows the darkest and ugliest face of New Zealand. A face that the world should pay more attention to.
This story had everything: corruption in a state enterprise, deliberate non-disclosure to Government of essential information by its officers at the highest level (Chairman John Maasland, CEO Craig Sinclair and CFO John Bole), a multinational company with a murky track record receiving a direct benefit worth tens of millions of dollars without any tender fron those officers, a potential payment promised to Sinclair and Bole worth 10 million pounds which was kept secret from Government, a possible attempt to defraud the NZ Government of those funds, a tailor-made secret inquiry in a clumsy attempt to whitewash the affair on the part of a government apointed official (the discredited auditor-general A MacDonald) who did not have the powers, the expertise to conduct any meaningful examinatio of the facts, and ultimately the persecution and vendetta against the legal officer who detected the problems and spoke the truth (as portrayed in the NZ media -in the one and only piece ever published on the affair.
As a result: the media were muzzled. The perpetrators were left alone (although their reputation suffered greatly), and the public was misled.
Not even the dismal failure of Airways in its bizarre UK bid (which cost millions and millions of taxpayers' money) led to an in-depth inquiry of their actions. The Minister responsible looked the other way and even defended their costly folly as a legitimate exercise. What the Minister in fact did was to defend his own ineptitude given his failure to supervise Maasland and Sinclair properly. He did fire Chairman Maasland on the spot from the chair of the company but stopped short of sacking the whole board and Sinclair and Bole, as he should have. To do so may have had financial repercusions for the state enterprise. Commercial expediency prevailed over morality and good governance. It should not have.
The morale of the story is that New Zealand is not what it says it is. It is not clean. It has not reached African levels, but is hardly Victorian. Its institutions are riddled with incestuous conflicts of interest which have made them truly unaccountable. If something happens, it is promptly swept under the carpet. Outsiders should tread carefully. The establishment is controlled by people who look like gentlemen. They are not.
The Airways story, the so-called wine-box inquiry, and many others simply confirm this trend, which is well known to all Wellington insiders.
The vendetta in this case may have failed and backfired spectacularly on the main instigator (Craig Sinclair) but he is still there, still on the public payroll, to the shame of a country which needs desperately an independent body like a Commission against Corruption.
It won't happen. But at least the world needs to about it, and this story exposed its need better than any other.
When one reads about New Zealand's high ranking in Transparency International, one wonders who this organisation actually talks to before categorising nations. That should hardly be a surprise. Transparency International also ranks Singapore as a model of accountability. Enough said then.
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