The latest on Horan

Another episode in the case against Horan in the SST:

MP Brendan Horan used his mother’s credit card to pay for accommodation while attending a race meeting and campaigning in New Plymouth, it is alleged.

He also allegedly used the card to buy a cheap suit, to stay at a motor lodge in Hastings and to pay a veterinary bill for his horse.

The Sunday Star-Times last week obtained hundreds of pages of Horan’s mother’s bank statements going back to 2000. They show that Olwen Horan’s cards were being hammered while she was terminally ill and bedridden before her death in August.

There are two issues here – legality and morality. I’m surprised with all this evidence, that no one has gone to the Police.

But even putting aside the legality, I think it is morally indefensible to be spending up large from your dying mother’s credit card as if they were your own.

The Star-Times can reveal her credit card was used at the Dawson Motel in New Plymouth on May 27, 2011. Horan was in New Plymouth overnight on May 26 to attend a race meeting, and made a speech to a Grey Power meeting on behalf of Peters when Peters’ flight was diverted due to bad weather.

Maybe NZ First should refund some money also!

In August 2011, the card was used to buy a suit at Barkers menswear in Papamoa for $99. Horan had boasted at the time about it being a bargain.

A bargain indeed!

Horan last week told Radio Live his relationship with his mother was such that if he ever required anything, “all I needed to do was ask”.

He said there may have been cheques from his mother, but no-one had shown him specifics.

“She may have given me some cheques… mothers tend to do that.

“And if she did, so what?

And it might well be legal, if she agreed. But considering the codicil to the will, it suggests she did not. But again regardless of the legality, most people would not regard his actions as ethical.