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Key’s Hands All Over Murky Foreign Trusts

Rt Hon Winston Peters

New Zealand First Leader
Member of Parliament for Northland

29 APRIL 2016

Key’s Hands All Over Murky Foreign Trusts

New Zealanders will be bitterly disappointed that their Prime Minister has been condoning foreigners’ use of NZ as a place to hide away their wealth, says New Zealand First.

“Mr Key has never had any intention of shutting down this murky state of affairs in which the mega wealthy and crims use our loose rules on foreign trusts to evade tax or detection from their own countries. There are now over 12,000 such trusts.

“The PM was warned in 2013 by IRD to act to protect New Zealand’s international reputation. Nothing happened.

“Now he glibly proclaims that he knew nothing about IRD’s concern on foreign trusts. He says that recently he only heard about it from one of the groups involved – never mentioning that his lawyer had approached him on it.

“There’s a pattern emerging of Mr Key’s brain fade whenever the heat goes on – the railway shares he couldn’t remember about, but he had 100,000, ‘forgetting’ the breakfast meeting with Ian Fletcher, who he appointed to head GCSB, claiming no knowledge of the Kim Dotcom raid.

“As PM he professes to have been at the top of his game in currency trading, yet as PM he doesn’t know what is going on? The IRD’s moves on foreign trusts would have been discussed by the Cabinet.

“Mr Key has been obliging to foreign corporates – that’s why so many still pay little or no tax in New Zealand, like Facebook and Tegel.

“New Zealanders, particularly National Party voters, should have been able to expect better from Mr Key.”

ENDS

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