N.Z. Future Forest Products Limited

Let’s have a careful look at N.Z. Future Forest Products Limited. It was established on 27 March 2019.

It is a company 100% owned by Kinleith Continuation LP. That is a limited partnership where all we know is the public partner is David Henry, son of NZ First lawyer Brian Henry. It is normal for an LP to be set up to hide detail of foreign investors.

The address of both NZFFP and Kinleith is a flat owned by Brian Henry.

It has four directors. The three initial directors are Brian Henry, David Henry and Michael Rann (based in UK). A 4th director appointed on 27 August 2019 is Jan Trotman, partner of Winston Peters.

Within days of being formed it applied for $15 million from the provincial slush fund for a feasibility study for a new engineered timber operation in Gisborne. Yes $15 million for a study! Luckily Labour Ministers turned it down a few days ago.

They also applied for $95 million from the Billion trees fund to buy farmland to convert to commercial forestry.

Yes a possibly foreign owned company run by NZ First people tried to get over $100 million out of taxpayers so it could buy up NZ owned farmland and convert it to forestry land.

No wonder Winston called a journalist a psycho for daring to ask him questions about it. Because there is clearly nothing at all to see here.

It isn’t just about the unsuccessful attempt to get $110 million from taxpayers. NZ First has been responsible for policy changes exempting forestry companies from overseas investment restrictions on land. So even without the grant applications, we have the potential for people intimately involved with NZ First to benefit from NZ First policy.

And we don’t know who the actual owners are. They have a corporate structure which hides the foreign investors.