No OIC Annual Statistics Since 1998

Eagle eyed Watchdog readers keen for their annual cure for insomnia will have noticed that we haven't published any annual OIC statistics more recent than 1998. Have we slackened off and got sick of them? Has our layout artist finally mutinied? Not a bit of it. The OIC simply hasn't produced any annual statistics more recent than that. Nor did it bother to tell us why. Here's what it told Green co-leader, Rod Donald MP (11/1/01; letter from Stephen Dawe, OIC Secretary):

"With regard to the 1999 figures, no figures were released. This was due to the fact that the Commission had changed databases. The new database reports on a 'net investment' basis compared with a 'gross investment' basis by the previous database. Producing figures for 1999 on a 'net' basis and those being compared with previous years 'gross' figures would have been misleading. The Commission is working on transferring the previous years legacy work on to the new database so that comparative figures can be accessed. This work will be completed within the first quarter of the year". In the meantime, the only OIC overviews we have to work from are its six monthly reports to Parliament. Not good enough.

OIC Stoutly Defends Foreign Investors' "Good Character"

For several years now, we have been filing complaints with the Overseas Investment Commission (OIC) about the "good character", or lack thereof, of various people who have applied to it, as individuals, for permission to invest in NZ, or people who own and/or control companies seeking OIC permission to invest here (the "good character" of the actual companies is of no interest to any New Zealand law). Every one of those complaints has been turned down, and duly reported in Watchdog.

Now the issue has been taken up by a political party. Greens Co-Leader, Rod Donald, sits on Parliament's Finance and Expenditure Select Committee. When Stephen Dawe, the OIC Secretary, appeared before that Committee, in March 2001, for the OIC's annual Parliamentary review, Donald tackled him for having approved the good character of individuals James Blanchard, Michael Baybak, and the people owning and/or controlling Waste Management USA and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). Committee chairman, Labour MP Mark Peck, instructed Donald not to name individuals, so thereafter he referred only to people with "substantial shareholdings" in Wharekauhau Holdings, which operates an exclusive lodge on the Wairarapa coast. Donald specifically asked Dawe about Blanchard's role as a substantial financier of Mozambican terrorist group, Renamo (back in the 1980s, when Renamo was usd by apartheid South Africa and Reagan's America as storm troopers in "the war against Communism"). This was all duly reported in the mainstream US media.

Dawe's answer was fascinating: "I guess one way of talking that through, is to give the example that to some people members of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) are considered to be terrorists and to some people they are viewed as people who fighting some sort of good cause. We investigated... and we were satisfied on the information given back to us that it was difficult to conclude the person was associated with terrorist activity per se" (NZ Press Association, 14/3/01; "Terrorist, insider trading links questioned"). He stated that applicants have to provide an "unfettered solicitor's certificate" as to their character, and that the OIC has powers to further check their character, both in NZ and overseas. Dawe repeated that the OIC was satisfied as to the character of the people behind Waste Management and ADM.

All of these cases - the people behind Wharekauhau, Waste Management and ADM - have been extensively covered in Watchdog and we simply refer you to back issues, if you want the details. This performance before a Select Committee amply makes the point again that the OIC will approve the character of absolutely anyone who applies to invest in NZ. And we haven't even mentioned Tommy Suharto.

The OIC, as presently operating, is a farce, and the time is well overdue for the Government to radically overhaul it and the laws governing it. Otherwise, they might as well replace it with a monkey with a rubber stamp.


Non-Members:
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Foreign Control Watchdog, P O Box 2258, Christchurch, New Zealand/Aotearoa. April 2001.

Email cafca@chch.planet.org.nz

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