Who Are These People And What Are They Doing? by Michael S.

Leighton Associates have been explaining how New Zealand spearheaded an efficient way of laundering the proceeds of crime. That's when "dirty" money from drug deals or child pornography is transferred from one place to another so it can't be identified who it belongs to. That technique started as a way of avoiding tax, sending the proceeds of New Zealand's privatisation overseas and making sure the IRD couldn't catch up with it. After money laundering for ordinary crimes was made illegal, the lawyers and judges needed to make sure that route was still open.

In New Zealand, it became illegal to talk about crimes that were "confidential". Lawyers had been transferring dirty money for ever and didn't want to stop. Once the lawyers and judges could say that crimes were "confidential", the crime of ordinary people was reporting the crimes, not doing them.

There is a major international organization called "Transparency International". It is trying to make every country reveal the beneficial owner of the money invested in it. Every year it publishes an "Index" giving scores of how corrupt people think different countries are. New Zealand comes near the top every time.

That means that New Zealanders say they think New Zealand is not corrupt, because when New Zealand lawyers hide who the beneficial owners are (such as judges or politicians), nobody is allowed to say what they have done even if they find out. Not very transparent, but very good for those judges and politicians. Since they have changed the way the law works, though, they can avoid describing what they have done as illegal.

Transparency International has been very happy to report every year that New Zealand is not corrupt. So it turns a blind eye to something anyone that takes an interest knows is going on. Or it decides that since the lawyers and judges do it, it is legal and it illegal to talk about it so they are going to keep quiet ...

So who are those people in the picture?

The one on the left is John Shewan. He was a big figure in an international financial consulting company, PwC, also known as Price Waterhouse Coopers. It was involved with Bill Wilson, the disgraced Supreme Court judge, and it's one of the Big Four that include all the companies that have used New Zealand's way of doing money laundering and pilfering without being found out. John Shewan also had connections with the Reserve Bank.

In 2016, the Panama Papers exposed New Zealand as laundering money out of Malta and back into Luxembourg in the EU. A journalist who was later blown up in a car bomb was threatened with multiple libel proceedings for exposing it. John Shewan was asked by John Key, then the Prime Minister, to report on whether New Zealand was enabling money laundering. He very cleverly reported on something different, that New Zealand wasn't a tax haven.

Not very transparent, Mr Shewan.

So who is the other person in the picture? That is Suzanne Snivelly, an American accountant who is ... an old connection with PwC and the Reserve Bank.

Suzanne Snivelly was appointed to run Transparency International in New Zealand. She did the questionnaires about the perception of corruption so that her mates could use the country best for her financial services mates. As she said, "it's possible for overseas interests with far more money than New Zealanders have to buy houses and increase house prices." Snivelly ran Transparency International in New Zealand for a decade, refusing to deal with "individual cases" (unlike other places where Transparency International was not covering up but exposing corruption).

Not very transparent, Ms ... oh, look, no Dame Snivelly !

She did very nicely out of her very "clever" corporate accountant's approach to "financial services".

Not very transparent, "Transparency" International !

But why would Transparency International appoint a corporate accountant if that wasn't what it wanted?

Transparency International isn't the only organisation that has been pushed into the dirt by New Zealand's very "clever" lawyers and judges (we don't expect better from politicians anyway).

Maybe it should be called "Coverup International" ?