MP's High Court trial date set

Independent member of Parliament Taito Phillip Field's trial on 37 criminal charges will start in Auckland in April.

The Mangere MP is facing 12 bribery and corruption charges and 25 charges of trying to obstruct or pervert the course of justice.

His trial will start on April 20, and is expected to take 12 weeks.

The trial date was confirmed at a callover hearing in the court yesterday.

Field was committed for trial in May after a four-week depositions hearing in Manukau District Court before Judge Charles Blackie.

During that hearing, 51 witnesses were called. The same number are expected to be called during the High Court trial.

Interpreters are also expected to be used by many of the prosecution witnesses.

The charges were laid after Field allegedly accepted work on seven of his properties by Thai nationals in return for immigration assistance between November 2002 and October 2005.

The charges of attemptong to pervert or obstruct the course of justice were laid after he was alleged to have made false statements, encouraged others to make false statements and created false documents during subsequent inquiries into the corruption allegations by Queen's Counsel Noel Ingram and by the police.

The charges went ahead after Justice Tony Randerson granted police the right last year to lay them following a hearing in the High Court at Auckland in August.

The leave of the High Court was required before the charges could be laid against a sitting MP.

- NZPA