11 September 2007

Crime agency needs resources to pursue fraud kingpins

Green Party Justice Spokesperson Nandor Tanczos has stressed that the new Organised Crime Agency unveiled today needs both a clear mandate and sufficient resources to properly investigate white collar crime in New Zealand.

"The investigation of complex white collar fraud is a costly and time consuming process, with no guarantee at the end of the road that a clever QC won't win an acquittal. .

"The Greens will be seeking to ensure this new agency doesn't signal a shift away from investigating complex corporate crime schemes, and towards seeking easy convictions from the crime minnows, rather than tackling the kingpins," Nandor says.

"The Government has taken the opportunity offered by the retirement of Serious Fraud Office chief David Bradshaw and folded the SFO into the new Organised Crime Agency, with the aim of increasing the ability of Police and other agencies to suppress organised crime here and around the Pacific.

"Worryingly, this new framework places the investigation, prosecution and recovery of criminally derived assets all within the hands of the Police. Such a concentration of powers raises the risk that vendettas could be pursued by the Police, at the expense of the wider set of priorities more likely if some of those decisions were kept at arm's length.

"It is not as if the OCA will inherit an ideal situation as regards white collar crime. Ever since the SFO decided not to prosecute the Magnum transaction in the Winebox, critics have alleged that the SFO has at times shied away from tackling the bigger fish, and boosted its strike rate of prosecutions by pursuing the minnows of corporate crime.

"The OCA has to maintain a commitment to cracking down on major corporate fraud - and not be diverted entirely to gang-related crime, or to terrorism-related money laundering. It is worth recalling that people lost more in the shonky financial dealings of the 1980s than from the rest of property crime combined during that period.

"The public needs to be re-assured that the OCA will give fresh focus and commit sufficient resources to the task of putting major white collar criminals behind bars," Nandor says.

ENDS

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