[UPDATED] "One assumes there is some innocent explanation"

The Spencer Trust must have broken down the amounts into parcels of less than $10k and then they must have been sent through another layer of trusts in order to have been non-declarable. And that's the bit Winston doesn't want us knowing about presumably, because it's a dodgy method of maintaining a paper trail of anonymity. The alternative is that NZ First has lied on its electoral returns (not declaring donations over $10,000 (?)), but since the statute of limitations was only 6 months on those, there can never be any illegality. But it is such a dodgy look that Winston has every motivation to wriggle out of ever having to disclose either scenario. That is, I take it, the main issue for him.

[UPDATE 8:00PM: Well now the NZ First MP Peter Brown is admitting as such on TV tonight. Everyone's human and makes mistakes is what he was muttering about. The NZ First official line is that the non declaration of $50k was an administrative oversight! NZ Herald reporting:
New Zealand First deputy leader Peter Brown appears oblivious to any wrongdoing, saying it appears to be a genuine mistake and he does not know anything more about it.

It's as rich as National forgetting to add GST, it's as rich as Labour innocently overspending $800k, it's all that and a bag of chips... and rummaging around... hang on... a sachet of sauce - bonus! Because it was Winston in parliament only last week who was slagging off Bob Clarkson for not declaring money in his campaign. That was the basis of Winston's electoral petition against him, wasn't it? That Clarkson was hiding the truth about how much he spent. Oh, Winston you can't say that again with a straight face. It's so bad.

It's so bad that if we do not accept that it was a genuine oversight that the Spencer Trust money was not declared then we must conclude that NZ First is run by crooks. We do not accept that it was an error - the architects of these elaborate deals either figured it would work this way and no one would ever find out,
or,
got cold feet about the declaration because it would look politically damaging to brand "kiwi-battler" and the limitless howlings against secret trusts that the Party Leader engages in to this day. Maybe Winston's lawyer Brian Henry and his off-sider aren't as smart as Winston has to believe they are. Maybe they knew that if the Spencer Trust became public knowledge it would not survive a probe? It obviously is not surviving the probe the SFO are giving it now because the NZ First minions are chucking the dead bodies out and claiming they all must of had accidents - in a pathetic effort to spin the public before the cops can get in and declare the whole place a murder scene. The snake oil doesn't even look like snake oil anymore.

Why the Vela cheques (all under the $10k cap) had to be put into the Spencer Trust and not just given directly to NZ First (on my understanding they would not have to be declared) is still a mystery to me. One possibility is that the NZ First finances really are a shambles and that Dail Jones or another senior figure will have to fall on Winston's sword and be sacrificed for him by admitting all blame. It was Jones after all who was merrily telling people at the beginning of the year (?) that $150k (?) had shown up in their accounts suddenly but he didn't know from whom it came. Then he was admonished by the party and had to then pretend that he had made a mistake and that was all wrong. Another mistake.

The biggest mistake was the public's - to trust that Winston wasn't like that. And to keep that faith Winston had to keep the public away from the truth. The truth that he knows because he is part of that system:
For every politician eating free in a restaurant there is a businessman picking up the tab. For every corporate interest seeking influence there is a lawyer waiting to take their cheque. For every bag man there is a slush fund. And for every revelation of the ignominious truth there has to be a fall guy. No one has taken the role of fall guy at this point. The selection process must be underway.

Are there any other mistakes waiting to emerge right before the SFO gets its hands on the evidence of those mistakes? Are there? What about the legal fees? Did the money solicited for Winston's legal fees really go to pay his lawyers? Or did that money get re-donated by the lawyer to NZFirst? If any of that money ends up going to the Spencer Trust then there is trouble. But who knows at this point? The Spencer Trust could of owned vehicles and campaigning items and other property for all we know.

We know we will find Winston holding the other end of the ball of string when we finally unravel it. At the moment the questions are: how long is that piece of string? and how long will it take to reach the end of it? If it's before the election Winston will need a political miracle to survive.
UPDATE ENDS]

The scampi inquiry allegations that Winston took hush money are quite another. If the SFO can get a solid hold on just one edge of that and they start pulling they have the potential to tear the whole tent down. Is this why the PM is defending him so vigourously? Her insistence in parliament this afternoon that it was someone in the SFO or a government agency that leaked news to National that the SFO investigation would commence was Nixonian. As a diversion tactic a demonstration of her paranoia was a mistaken one. She was lashing out randomly at her own departments in an effort to cover up the fact she has let Winston's shonkyness get the better of her. There's three things we must remember about Helen Clark:
1. She is always right and everyone else is to blame if it looks like she is wrong
2. She acts cautiously, but can speak losely
3. She remembers everything
I never had her pegged for a conspiracy nut - especially not when she has the Police wrapped around her finger. Her attempt to shoot the messenger and the agency and continue to draw a conclusion that rumours and coincidence point to the revelations of a Davinci Code type relationship with National and the worlwide conspiracy against Winston Peters is absurd and damages her credibility. Her attack on the Serious Fraud Office under a backdrop of her abolishing it makes it look like she's engaging, vicariously, in a classic piece of Winston Peters revenge crusade.

So, Winston's slush fund saga continues today. Buried in lawyers, camouflaged in writs, drowned in leaks, stupified with obfiscation - on and on this meltdown smoulders. We await the point it bursts into flames and explodes.

SFO investigators took the records away from Whangarei lawyer and Spencer Trust trustee Grant Currie last night.
Mr Currie said the SFO took the "complete records" of the trust from when it was opened in August 2005.

He showed the entry in the accounts to TV3 (image c/o Whaleoil) with bits blacked out which made it more suspicious not less. How bad does it look. The first thing you ask yourself is who are the other two donors?