Owen Glenn

Spirit of 76 blogs about Investigate’s feature on Owen Glenn, the ex-pat billionairre who donated $500,000 to Labour.

I haven’t read the article but I’m not sure there is anything too new in it. Basically the sum total is:

* Glenn’s company ships tobacco for BAT
* He was fined $1.5 million by the US Government in 1999
* Some of his colleagues are dubious
* He would benefit from a free trade deal with China
* His company pays almost no tax

I don’t see any smoking gun here. The business of the fine was covered by me back in May. It is useful to republicise it, but it isn’t anything brand new.

What is the bigger issue for me is the outraegous allegations by Mallard about mythical National Party donors in the US and the fact that if Glenn was a National Party donor there would have been months and months of stories about him.

If he had been a National Party donor, I suggested in May the headlines would have been:

“There has been wide-spread condemnation of the revelation that a billionaire who has not lived in NZ for 40 years has been funding the National Party with the largest donation in electoral history. Mr Glenn, who was prosecuted by US authorities and paid $800,000 in a settlement, had previously made secret donations, but they now stand revealed. In the US people can not donate more than $2,000 to a party, and donations from foreigners are banned. The donation scandal has led to calls for similar restrictions in NZ …… “