Dail Jones was right

The last pieces of the New Zealand First funding mystery were solved today, as the Herald reveals that the “close to $100,000 than $10,000” mystery amount referred to by Dail Jones in December 2007 was a $80,000 donation from the Spencer Trust.

No wonder Peters was furious with Jones. He had accidentially revealed the existence of the Spencer Trust. As Party President Jones wasn’t even aware of the Trust – it was all Peters.

And what did Peters say at the time:

Asked if that meant “there was no big anonymous donation”, Mr Peters said “precisely”.

$80,000 is not big of course.

And in that infamous press conference:

“We have a treasurer in the party and he says it’s a consolidation of amounts around the party. He should know. One can get confused when you look at documentation and perhaps he [Mr Jones] should have spoken to the treasurer.”

Now this is fascinating. Peters refers to ti being a consolidation of amounts “around the party”. This is implying that the Spencer Trust is part of the party.

Where the $158,000 came from to “repay” NZ First’s unlawful spend at the last election:
“We’ve had anonymous donations at $10, and $20, and $50 for a long, long time because some people used to think – and it’s an attitude that still permeates New Zealand as a democracy – that one day the communists might take over and they will be all in the firing line.”

Yep all those small donations of $10, $20, $50 and oh yeah $10,000 and $25,000.

Incidentally we still don’t know where the $158,000 that should have been paid to the taxpayer went.

Now there is an interesting scenario. What if the $80,000 was made up of seperate donations each under $10,00.01? Would that have to be disclosed?

Unless the Spencer Trust is literally part of NZ First – as in an additional suffix to their main bank account – I believe the answer is yes. And it seems its money was kept in a solictor’s trust fund so the answer is they are separate. The donation is from the Spencer Trust or even the solictor’s trust fund, and was $80,000 so should have been declared.