On Their Honours: the Paula Vennells petition - by Michael S.

In the UK, there is now huge vocal consternation about corruption in government. It is currently focused on the "Post Office scandal".

The Post Office commissioned a new computer from the Fujitsu company in the 1990s. It was called "Horizon" and it was the largest non-military computer in the world.

The new "Horizon" computer was directly connected to all the "sub" (small) post offices. These were usually in dairies run by small local business people. Those people had to do their post office transactions through a terminal that belonged to the Post Office and connected direct to Horizon.

Suzanne Snively, honorary Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit

After the new "Horizon" accounting system was introduced, according to the Post Office many sub postmasters and subpostmistresses started stealing money. They were prosecuted, by the Post Office's own staff and lawyers. Some were advised to plead guilty for a lesser sentence, though they all denied wrongdoing. Some were found guilty after contested trials where evidence was given that the computer system did not have "bugs" so they must be guilty.

Innocent people were bankrupted, went to prison, committed suicide.

That must sound familiar to Kiwis: a huge coverup of something going wrong in the system, and innocent people are destroyed by senior officials and lawyers.

John Shewan, Companion of the NZ Order of Merit

There is now widespread disgust and outrage in the UK at the way the Post Office officials and lawyers behaved. The police are investigating criminal offences, even though people involved had big jobs and lots of money or high Honours.

Paula Vennells was given a CBE (Companion of the British Empire) award for services to the Post Office - she was employed by it in a very high paying job. When the story about what she and other officials had done finally broke, she operated a coverup. She claimed documents showing the Horizon system was "not fit for purpose" were confidential and withheld them. She refused to tell a Select Committee of Parliament why she had done that. There is now a petition for her to be stripped of her CBE.

The petition has passed a million signatures. And that's in a country that has already stripped Honours from famous people like Lester Pigott, a famous jockey convicted of tax offences, as well as the rapist Harvey Weinstein.

This coverup in high places, destroying honest individuals with dishonest actions, is a more innocent version of what's been done in New Zealand, again by highly paid officials in government bodies. What is different in New Zealand is that the coverups are still claimed as legal. And they cover up crimes rather than just being criminal cover-ups of mistakes.

In fact, it's quite good business for certain lawyers, because to make it work properly you need certain things only the legal system can give you. You need a court order that says you can do something illegal (such as steal public money or transfer the proceeds of drug dealing) and hide or destroy the evidence - it's all "confidential". You need lawyers to get the order so it cannot be provably linked to the people who took the money. A lawyer can get you the coverup order (and be paid off with some more public money). It is only legal in the employment court, where the judges have made a new kind of legal procedure, like putting bugs in a computer system, but judges in other, proper courts have had to adjust the mainstream legal process to accommodate it. It has changed the New Zealand legal system so that when it is a matter people in high places who can use public money to pay off lawyers, it can be more legal to cover up crime than it is to report it.

In the new climate of tackling corruption, a system for committing it and covering it up, and making it illegal to report it, is at risk of meeting its doom. Judging by the coverups uncovered so far, we suggest that New Zealand's equivalent of the Post Office will be found in Tauranga. There has been a lot of public money corruption focused on that seaside town, especially the prosecution of Geoffrey Brown, who reported the corruption in the City Council and the persecution of Ana Shaw, who reported corruption at the District Hospital. Judges have been very keen to claim that this corruption was "confidential", because it had been covered up in a certain way.

An order for anonymity is a very important part of a coverup of crime that has reached the courts. Even if the courts are suppressing information about crimes to protect the criminals, the public won't always tolerate it. Suppression orders are central to New Zealand's treatment of criminals. In fact, it can be better to commit a crime and get a suppression order from a court than just to make a mistake and get blamed for it.

In New Zealand James Wallace, a sex offender, got away with his crimes and kept his Honours for years, until his name suppression was lifted. Only then could he be stripped of his Honours, even though everyone knew who the mysterious sex offender was.

If Kiwis reacted like the UK public about financial crimes, who else might they suggest would be stripped of their Honours for being part of the problem when they should have been part of the solution?

Two candidates suggest themselves.

Firstly the person who throughout the establishment of the new coverup order was the local representative of Transparency International. That is an international organization that is supposed to expose corruption. Its local representative was Suzanne Snively, a Dame companion of the Order of Merit because she is not a New Zealander. She is a former partner in the consultancy company Price Waterhouse Cooper / PwC. That company has also been getting into trouble with its secrecy prosecutions in Europe. Snively suppressed reporting of New Zealand's coverup method, refused to have individual actions supported in New Zealand, and warned anyone who wanted to report corruption that they would be attacked and destroyed if they did.

Secondly, her former PwC colleague, John Shewan, a CNZM (Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit), who covered up the money laundering system that John Key asked him to investigate in 2016 by talking instead about tax havens.