The Dominion Post's Martin Kay has found out about yet more undeclared payments to NZ First from one its trusts. We are finding it hard to believe that a party that holds the balaance of power and which is allowed to vote in major policy changes has so systematically deceived the country and flouted the law so many times.
Details continue to emerge about money paid to NZ First by the Spencer Trust - payments the party president at the time says he was never aware of.
MP Dail Jones, the president from November 2005 till March, said yesterday that the Spencer Trust paid nearly $90,000 of NZ First bills in 2006.
He told The Dominion Post that the first he heard of the trust was when the newspaper revealed in July that the trust had channelled money to the party.
Confirmation that he was ignorant of the trust came after trustee Grant Currie revealed it paid $87,648 in NZ First invoices in 2006.
"The bills were paid directly by the trust." A further $17,000 in bills was paid in 2005.
Mr Jones' lack of knowledge of the trust raises questions about who referred the bills to it for payment and what they were for.
The 2006 sum takes the total channelled to the party in donations and bill payments to more than $234,000 since 2005.
None of it was declared under rules requiring notification of donations of more than $10,000 from the same source in the same year. Payments in kind count as donations.
