Banks wins costs

The Herald reports:

Former politician John Banks has been awarded $66,200 in costs from the Crown for the Court of Appeal hearings that resulted in his acquittal for his electoral return for mayoral donations.

Mr Banks said a further application for costs of $190,000 had now been lodged in the High Court for the earlier trial which convicted him of electoral fraud before that conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Pleased to see Banks get costs. I suspect he is still waiting for the apologies from all the Labour MPs who called him a crook.

While he had dropped allegations of bad faith by former Solicitor General Mike Heron, he was still taking action against Paul Dacre QC, the Crown Prosecutor in the case for the failure to disclose a critical document in the case.

The Appeal Court’s decision against a retrial came after the disclosure of the document which the Crown had not revealed ahead of a previous Court of Appeal hearing.

If that action goes to court, it will be very interesting.