NZ prime minister off to Fantasyland

PM's Hollywood trip will face close political scrutiny

Prime Minister John Key says he's off to Hollywood to promote New Zealand as a movie making destination and suggestions he is in cahoots with the United States film industry over internet mogul Kim Dotcom are "fantasy".

NZ Herald,

1 October

The Government has been criticised for being too close to the US after the dramatic raid on the MegaUpload founder's Auckland mansion in January.

Police arrest warrants and spying by the Government Communication and Security Bureau (GCSB) have since been found to have been unlawful.

Dotcom himself has said he believes US Vice President Jo Biden personally ordered the closure of MegaUpload on behalf of the American film industry, particularly his close friend and former senator Chris Dodd, who now heads the Motion Picture Association.

Key today said such suggestions were "nonsense".

"There's a few people that live in a fantasy land who have conspiracy theories," he told Newstalk ZB.

The Prime Minister said his upcoming trip to Hollywood was on the back of Warner Brothers hiring 3000 New Zealanders and spending "a billion dollars" for the Hobbit movies after the Government changed the law to redefine what a contract film worker was.

"The reason we did that was to promote interest in making movies in New Zealand. The view of a number of people in Hollywood is that while we are doing well with Warner Brothers, it's quite possible we could do as well with many other movie studios like Fox and Universal and Disney and the likes. So I am certainly keen to go and promote New Zealand as a place to make movies."

The case against Dotcom was sparked by belief in the US he had broken copyright laws and an extradition treaty being invoked, he said.

"Either Kim Dotcom has broken the law in the United States and he'll face trial or he hasn't. But that's got nothing to do with whether New Zealand is a good place to make movies or not."

Meanwhile Key has defended Deputy Prime Minister Bill English not telling him he has signed a rare ministerial certificate to keep the secretive actions of the GCSB out of a court hearing. Key only found out about the order in a subsequent briefing when GCSB revealed it had illegally spied on Dotcom because it believed he was a foreign national, not New Zealand resident.

Key today said English had a "30 second" conversation with the spy agency about the certificate but it was not up to his deputy to tell him about it.

"I agree GCSB should have told me when I came back to New Zealand," he told Radio Live. "Bill English wouldn't do that. That's not his job."

Asked if it should have been part of an update from English, Key said: "A lot of things happen when you are away."

"He would have assumed, and did assume rightfully so, that there would be a process where the ministry would tell me and they just didn't."

Key was last week forced to apologise to Dotcom over the illegal spying by GCSB.

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Closed ranks?   They always do.

Police stand firm behind besieged senior officer

Police have closed ranks behind the senior officer at the centre of the Kim Dotcom case who is facing allegations he lied under oath about illegal spying on the alleged internet pirate.

NZ Herald,

30 September, 2012

A leading legal expert says the official stance means the officer, Detective Inspector Grant Wormald, will now likely avoid a police investigation into whether he provided incorrect information during a High Court hearing.

The allegations against Wormald, who led the Dotcom investigation for the Organised and Financial Crime Agency (OFCANZ) arose last week during a hearing centred on the spying revelations. Wormald was accused by Dotcom's lawyer Paul Davison of giving “inconsistent” evidence in court about work undertaken by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) on behalf of police, in which Wormald said no other agency had been involved in the surveillance.

However, court documents show the GCSB had been engaged by police to monitor Dotcom - illegally - for at least a month before his arrest in January. GCSB staff had also attended a meeting with police including Wormald, US authorities and Crown Law before the raids. Davison said the inconsistencies in the police's account are “grave” and “significant”.

But Police Commissioner Peter Marshall has backed Wormald, and says speculation around his actions and those of other police while the case is still before the court is “deeply concerning”.

The Star-Times understands the police view is that Wormald's evidence was wrongly interpreted, not untrue.

University of Law Professor Bill Hodge said if Wormald had top police backing, it was unlikely he would be investigated for perjury.

“That's the difficulty with police in that they're both the prosecutor and the employer so it's very complicated,” Hodge said.

“Police might have wanted to pause before giving him complete backing, to take a closer look.”

Hodge said Wormald had two defences - either that it was an honest mistake or he was just doing what he was told by his employer.

When spoken to by the Sunday Star-Times, Wormald said the answer had been taken out of context, and rejected suggestions he had been lying. “I'm saying I told the truth.”

However, a police source said Wormald has argued the answer to his question has been taken out of context. He said he was asked about "physical surveillance" and was not referring to the snooping of emails and phonecalls which GCSB is understood to have carried out.

Wormald refused to go into the matter further because it was in front of the courts, but said a transcript of the hearing would provide context to what he said.

Marshall backed that stance, saying it was “deeply concerning” there had been “considerable recent speculative, inaccurate and selective commentary” around the actions of police officers involved in the Dotcom investigation.

“While it is not appropriate for me to comment on the detail of matters that are still before the court, I consider that police investigators have acted with integrity and in good faith throughout this inquiry, and they continue to have my unequivocal support,” Marshall said.

Fairfax Media has so far been refused access to the August 9 court transcript, but viewed footage of the hearing taken by Campbell Live. It shows Wormald on the stand, explaining and defending, under cross-examination, the police investigation and the raids, which included the use of the elite police squad known as the Special Tactics Group.

The pair also discussed the way in which the FBI had collected evidence about Dotcom - intercepting his emails - and the regularity with which that occurred.

Asked if police obtained their own interception warrant allowing them to listen to Dotcom's conversations, Wormald replied: “We certainly did not.” When Davison moved on to questions about the December 14 meeting between police, Crown Law and US authorities, Wormald said he would “rather not” name the other group in the room - now known to have been the GCSB.

Davison finally says: “So apart from the surveillance which [the police surveillance team] might have been going to undertake on your behalf was there any other surveillance being undertaken here in New Zealand to your knowledge?” Wormald replies: “No there wasn't.”

MANSION RAID COMPLAINT POSSIBLE

Kim Dotcom will complain to the police watchdog IPCA about the raid on his mansion. Dotcom's lawyer Paul Davison, QC, has raised concerns about inconsistencies in the testimony of the raid supervisor Grant Wormald. He indicated in court last week that the legal team may pursue a complaint. A member of Dotcom's legal team confirmed a complaint about the raid – that saw dozens of officers and a helicopter swoop on the Coatesville estate. The complaint will also include the actions of Detective Inspector Wormald. Wormald told the court last month that no other agencies were surveilling the tech mogul. It emerged last week that government spy agency GCSB was illegally intercepting communications from Dotcom and his Dutch co-accused Bram van der Kolk. Both were New Zealand residents and protected from snooping by the bureau, which is allowed to monitor only foreign intelligence.

Ross Meurant headed the infamous police Red Squads at the time of the 1981 Springbok tour but has since done a 'mea culpa' and come out to defend the victims of the Urewera terror raids and to speak out against excessive police powers

Meurant: Police won't investigate Dotcom spying

A complaint to police over the unlawful spying on Kim Dotcom will not be properly investigated and charges are unlikely, says former National MP and high-ranking policeman Ross Meurant.

NZ Herald,

1 October, 2012

The Green Party on Friday asked police to investigate the actions of the Government Communications Security Bureau in spying on Mr Dotcom and his associates in the weeks before the controversial raid on his Coatesville mansion.

Prime Minister John Key and the Inspector-General of Security and Intelligence, Justice Paul Neazor, have both acknowledged the spying on Mr Dotcom and an associate was unlawful because the two men were permanent residents.

Yesterday, Mr Meurant said he believed charges should be laid over the GCSB's actions.

However, that would not happen, he said. A long-standing police culture of avoiding court scrutiny over serious matters had now become entrenched in other agencies, including the GCSB.

"They will avoid at all costs having to account for their actions before a court of law. They'll put the preservation of themselves above the rule of law.

"The probability of the state being called to account for this shocking behaviour is zero."

Wellington lawyer Graeme Edgeler also believed a police investigation was unlikely, "and even if they do they'll probably decide like they did with Bradley Ambrose [in the Epsom teapot case] - yes, there has been [an offence] but decide not to charge him.

"But it does seem very clear to me that someone will have committed a crime. Whether it's the type that they should actually be charged for or if a warning or something is enough is a different question."

Last night, the Green Party said it had yet to hear back from the police over its complaint.