Update 100-year-old law, says SFO

Adam Feeley. Photo / Dean Purcell

The Serious Fraud Office is signalling a greater focus on bribery and corruption and has asked the Government to review legislation dealing with such crimes, some of which is a century old.

Serious Fraud Office chief executive Adam Feeley this week completed his first year in the job, a period marked by a decline in the number of cases the SFO has assessed and prosecuted, and a higher profile resulting from a new willingness to tell the media and public about investigations it is pursuing.

"If New Zealanders are to have greater security about the people who fight financial crime, they've got to see them doing their work," Mr Feeley told the Herald yesterday.

Although the SFO was now pursuing fewer cases than a year ago, "we think we're tackling the right ones", and they were mainly finance companies.

But there were other areas of fraud and economic crime, "so the broadening of what we're looking at is very important as well".

Last week, another high-profile SFO case reached.

The organisation announced it had laid eight charges against former Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) property manager Malcolm David Mason and another person, relating to a series of property transactions.

It has been reported the charges relate to a $9000 Singapore holiday and $160,000 cash payment.

Making a generic comment about bribery and corruption involving public officials, Mr Feeley said such offences generally involved relatively small amounts, "but from my point of view the victims of corruption are 4.4 million New Zealanders".

The charges announced last week were the end result of "an exhaustive" inquiry which Mr Feeley said was one of the most serious bribery and corruption investigations in New Zealand for many years.

But the SFO's announcement of the charges was tinged with frustration as Mr Feeley noted the investigation had extended wider than the persons and transactions that were the subject of the charges laid, but that, on the advice of the Wellington Crown Solicitor, there were insufficient grounds for any further action.

"There have been wider, and serious, issues raised by this investigation, including procurement processes in the public sector, the process for referring corruption allegations to law enforcement agencies, and the scope of New Zealand's bribery laws," Mr Feeley said.

The SFO had briefed Government agencies, including the Office of the Auditor-General, the State Services Commission and the Ministry of Justice, regarding these issues.

Mr Feeley expected there would be more discussions with these agencies after the completion of their investigations.

Yesterday, he told the Herald that the ACC investigation uncovered a number of matters that "fell on the ropes".

While Mr Feeley accepted that some practices such as "corporate hosting" may be acceptable in the private sector but not among public officials, the SFO was concerned by conduct "which some people might look at and say it's not appropriate in any context".

He said it was appropriate to ask whether current legislation was up to the task of dealing with bribery and corruption in the modern era.

The Crimes Act dealt only with bribery of MPs, judges and public officials, and the closest thing to generic bribery provisions applying to the private sector was the Secret Commissions Act, which turned 100 this year.