How in-fighting saw the trust disappear from Waipareira

By JON STOKES and PHIL TAYLOR


The pulsing tune of 1960s spy series Mission Impossible plays behind the message on Reg Ratahi's phone. It's an apt soundtrack for the cloak-and-dagger goings-on at Waipareira Trust, the urban Maori authority of which Ratahi is chief executive - the position John Tamihere occupied for almost a decade.

Ratahi worked for Tamihere, stepping up to the top job a year after the ebullient, ambitious lawyer left for Parliament in 1999.

His mission was to fill the shoes of the Pt Chevalier-born leader with the Ngati Porou whakapapa. It was what sports commentators call "a big ask".

To many, Tamihere was the embodiment of the trust. His profile was its profile. He drove its impressive growth from near-broke in 1991 to a respected social service provider today, now worth more than $12 million. Along the way the Waitangi Tribunal recognised Te Whanau O Waipareira Trust as an iwi.

Even Tamihere's most ardent critics don't deny that his contribution was vital. The trust was "in a bad state. He turned things around. Some trustees will say 'no', but he did", says Ratahi, a former Inland Revenue tax inspector who Tamihere employed to run the trust's health arm in the mid-1990s.

"Under his leadership we had amazing growth. When he got there, turnover was probably under $1 million. What happened was the whole direction of the trust changed. It went from being a post office for Government contracts to actually participating in providing some of those contracts, such as training courses.

"He got the health arm up and running with trust money, while he fought the fight with the Government to get funding. He is a bully and an intimidator, and he is good."

Ratahi estimates that when Tamihere resigned the trust was worth more than $8 million, which included an almost half-share in Westland - owner of the sprawling Westgate shopping complex at the end of the Northwestern motorway. That has become a prized investment. Although there's no plan to sell, Ratahi says the trust was recently offered $20 million for its stake.

It's the kind of praise one might expect from the good friend Ratahi once was, rather than the enemy Tamihere now seems to see him as.

So, what happened? How did such bad blood emerge from something so good?

It may be relevant that Tamihere's wife, Awerangi Durie, a former director of accounting and consultancy firm KMPG, was a rival candidate when Ratahi won the chief executive job.

It may be that some within the trust haven't appreciated Tamihere's paternalistic criticism since he left. It reached a peak in July with a series of critical letters that led to a raid on Ratahi's office and, later, a slanging match between Tamihere and Ricky Houghton, a community worker who is Waipareira's treasurer and another erstwhile friend of the Cabinet minister.

When the revelations broke late last week, a frazzled Tamihere uncharacteristically had nothing to say, instead asking for time to "check records".

Tamihere did, however, see the attacks coming. In fact, they were counter-attacks.

In an article in the Weekend Herald on July 24, trust board member Airini Tukerangi alleged financial mismanagement had led to losses of at least $3 million and mounting unpaid debt within the trust.

She also claimed that Ratahi, trust chairman Eynon Delamere and chartered accountant Bruce Bryant had committed the trust to loans worth millions of dollars and sold assets without board approval - all in breach of its constitution.

Soon after the article, Tamihere issued a statement alleging "incompetence, negligence or corruption" and calling for the chief executive and chairman to stand aside for an independent audit and a review of the trust's dealings "so that all trustees are fully informed and can meet their obligations to their beneficiaries". Tamihere's unhappiness included what he considered to be poor business moves, such as a venture into a call centre, which the MP claims has eaten $3 million.

Tukerangi, claiming "whanau mandate", sacked Ratahi and Delamere and assumed the role of chairwoman. She and four other board members gained brief control, taking over the trust's administration buildings, where they are suspected of going through documents.

This group is referred to by the anti-Tamihere faction as the "tight five" that, according to deputy chairwoman Naida Glavish, had a three-person adjunct: Tamihere, Tamihere's electorate chairman Mike Tolich (a former Waipareira chief financial officer), and a former girlfriend of Tolich's who was a trust board member.

The following week, the dismissal of Ratahi and Delamere was deemed unconstitutional and they resumed their roles.

It was agreed an independent audit of the trust's finances would be commissioned and the tight five were later removed from the board.

At a meeting on July 30 to set the terms of reference for the audit, Tamihere and Houghton verbally clashed. "Ricky Houghton threatened me that he was going to 'drop something on me'," Tamihere claimed in a letter to board members about the incident, dated Monday, August 2.

Tamihere claimed Ratahi and Houghton had accounts staff working through the weekend "trawling through matters pertaining to myself" and that someone had "again"contacted Act leader Rodney Hide.

"I will not be intimidated by threats, nor will I allow a cover-up."

Two days later, in another letter, he outlined some of the allegations his enemies were preparing to throw.

The terms of reference for the Deloitte inquiry were then extended from three to seven years, bringing Tamihere's tenure as chief executive into the review period. It is understood Houghton was the key person in that decision.

When Tamihere's father was terminally ill, he turned to Houghton, a health worker,

It's unlikely they are still close, despite Houghton's protestations last week that he "loves Tamihere like a brother". A source in the Tamihere camp says Houghton has worked closely with Bryant, "the contract Tamihere's Labour colleague and friend Clayton Cosgrove named Houghton, Ratahi and Bryant as the "gang of three" at the trust trying to bring the Cabinet minister down.

The Tamihere source suggests Glavish could be added. "She just doesn't like John, period." Glavish voted against Tamihere's golden handshake and is a former candidate for Mana Motuhake, which is now part of the Maori Party, Tamihere's main electorate rival in Tamaki Makaurau.

His "thieves and drug addicts"outburst in 2000, in which he accused Glavish and two other Waipareira people of leaking documents to Act, would have hardly endeared him to her, even if he did he later withdraw and apologise for his comments made under parliamentary privilege.

If Tamihere sees his continuing interest in Waipareira as guarding against an erosion of standards, those in charge now read it as a slur on their ability to run the place in his absence.

Ratahi and Houghton have both complained that the MP is a bully.

Houghton claims Tamihere is "obsessed with bringing the trust down" and doesn't deny telling Tamihere during their July 30 row that he would dish the dirt on him. Houghton says he was responding to threats from the MP but did not say what these were.

"I said to him [Tamihere], 'One thing you don't do is threaten the people who know where you buried the bodies'," Houghton told the Weekend Herald.

"I said, 'I am going to release a story in October or November and then I'm going to save the really good stuff till May, June, July, August, September next year." Next year is election year.

But Houghton claims his gripe with Tamihere was not personal. "I've always loved John, but I hate what he does. I won't let him destroy the whanau ... I didn't see [what I said] as a threat, it was an opportunity to say for every action there is a consequence."

All claim to be acting in the best interests of the trust.

When Tamihere, whose law degree made him a rarity among young West Auckland Maori in 1987, was first asked to run the trust, he said no. Four years later, he had a change of heart.

The intervening years were tough for Tamihere. The family name loomed large for all the wrong reasons: older brother David was convicted in 1990 of murdering Swedish tourists Heidi Paakkonen and Urban Hoglin. John Tamihere had been a rising star in the Maori Affairs Department but his public advocacy on behalf of his brother wasn't seen as a good fit and he ultimately took redundancy.

The top job at Waipareira proved a new beginning for Tamihere and the trust.

His energy, appreciation for systems, ability to cut deals and to see the essence of an issue, were, along with his affability, an ideal mix.

He became an outspoken and determined champion for urban Maori and won credibility across the races and in cultural, business and political sectors. North & South magazine chose him as its man of 1997.

The standing of the trust grew similarly. The management was not tainted by the claims of largesse that dogged some Maori organisations. Tamihere was paid $55,000 when he started and Ratahi is on $95,000 now, not exorbitant for the head of an organisation employing 200 people.

Bankers and bureaucrats saw Waipareira as worth backing. All of these things are now at risk.

"We are on a hiding to nothing," says Ratahi. "We are finding it very difficult to work with Government officials.

"They are asking us for audits, which we were not asked to provide before all the negative press broke.

"We have had organisations pull out of loan deals with us because of this. People have walked away from us. And the thing is, there is absolutely nothing wrong."

Tamihere describes the seepage of allegations over his supposed wrong-doings at the trust as "death by a thousand cuts".

Politically, he is at greatest risk not so much for accepting a $195,000 "thank you" payment from the trust after saying publicly he wouldn't take it, but for failing to reveal he did so to a Prime Minister who campaigned against golden handshakes.

If he falls over, his ousting will be all the more painful for coming from the trust into which he put so much. And Waipareira will be tainted by dysfunction and unprofessionalism.

Reg Ratahi's mission, it seems, is not about to get easier.