ACC Deny Contractual Arrangement With Sirva

30 September 2004

ACC Deny Contractual Arrangement With Sirva

The saga surrounding the connection between international relocating company SIRVA and ACC took a new twist yesterday when The Democrat's Social Issues Researcher, David Tranter, received a letter dated 27 Sept. from ACC's Senior Adviser Customer Relations, Paul Miller, stating, "ACC has no contractual arrangement with SIRVA". Yet a in recent newspaper article about SIRVA losing ACC papers on Dunedin streets SIRVA's New Zealand boss Graham Sutcliffe referred to ACC as their "client".

This matter arose out of the photographing of an a protest in May outside ACC's Greymouth office when the driver of a car stopped opposite was seen to be photographing the protest group. The car was traced to SIRVA following which Mr. Sutcliffe first claimed the photo was taken out of mere curiosity by Pickford's staff of whom SIRVA is the parent company. Mr. Tranter's suspicions were heightened when Mr. Sutcliffe subsequently told him that SIRVA's lawyer would give him a copy of the photo on condition that he publicly retracted the story. If the matter was the triviality Mr. Sutcliffe claimed why involve a lawyer? But even stranger is that if they had given me the photo it would be further proof that the incident happened which Mr. Sutcliffe asked me to publicly retract, Mr. Tranter said.

Now ACC deny any contractual arrangement with SIRVA - who say ACC is a "client". The photographing of a protest by a employees of a company who have links with ACC raises the wider question of covert surveillance of people carrying out legitimate protest Mr. Tranter says. I approached ACC at the suggestion of ACC Minister Ruth Dyson - and now in his letter ACC's Paul Miller suggests I ask SIRVA.The self-contradictory statements by SIRVA and now ACC's further contradiction raise questions which I am referring back to Ruth Dyson.

ENDS

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