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Home / New Zealand

Barry Soper: Justice or is justice now for sale?

Newstalk ZB
10 May, 2017 05:00 PM3 mins to read

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William Yan - also known as Bill Liu, Yang Liu and Yong Ming Yan - pleaded guilty to the serious criminal charge in March and name suppression was lifted at the sentencing hearing in the Auckland District Court this morning.
Opinion

There are few times that you feel so incensed about something that doesn't, and hopefully never will, directly affect you.

It's hard to imagine how the Washington beltway felt when their impetuous President Donald Trump did an Arnold Schwarzenegger on his top lawman James Comey, telling in in a letter
that he was "hereby terminated and removed from office, effectively immediately."

The Trumpet sounded a shallow note when he blasted Comey about "restoring public trust and confidence in it's vital law enforcement mission."

He need look no further that the Rose Garden to realise that those sentiments should be directed at the Oval Office.

The fact that Comey was investigating links between the Russians and the Trump campaign will escape no one, despite his lame line in the termination letter that he personally wasn't under investigation.

Now if that wasn't enough to get the blood boiling, a transfusion was required to cope with what was happening around the same time, close to home, in the Auckland District Court.

Chinese money launderer Bill Liu was being sentenced on a representative charge and was sent to what John Banks used to call a Club Med, although that'd be decidedly down market on where this criminal will now to have to wallow away his time.

For the next five months he'll be detained at his luxury penthouse apartment in downtown Auckland, not far away from SkyCity where he gambled a staggering $239 million with a loss of $23 million over a dozen years.

Liu will be allowed out for up to five hours a day for business meetings, but poor fellow's been told he won't be allowed to use his apartment's gym.

Last year he coughed up $43 million to settle a civil suit with the police, with $15 million of it being kept to cover the cost of bringing him to justice and the rest being sent to China.

But was he brought to justice or is justice now for sale in this country?

Equally as important is how was this man allowed into the country against official advice that he didn't meet the good character test?

Former Labour Minister Shane Jones rejected the advice and let him in after lobbying from his old mate Dover Samuels.

Winston Peters had plenty to say about it when Liu settled with the police, bleating that not only is justice for sale but also the key to citizenship.

Yeah well the custodian of that key was Shane Jones who is apparently being courted by Peters for New Zealand First.

Jones said at the time he feared Liu would be executed if he was returned to China.

But since then he's been to China and back and is now incarcerated in his apartment.

The blood's now curdling.

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