SICKENING CORRUPTION - and MORE LIES in the blatant cover up! This is the tip of a MASSIVE iceberg and typical of how its dealt with - by lies and cover ups which cost the taxpayer MILLIONS! There are literally thousand of these organisations which operate in this manner - identical to the manner in which the Carterton Community Centre acted as umbrella for organisations that were not legal entities - and in fact nothing more than a series of little cash cows designed for political purposes and purposes of concealing premeditated FRAUD. Hekia Parata is a CORRUPT LIAR - and its time taxpayers demanded her resignation - this is no different to Paratas corrupt attempts to cover up the bullying and corruption at the South End School in Carterton for year after year, while she rakes in OUR money and stuffs it in her own pockets and those of her political mates! After holding on to an audit report for a week, Education Minister Hekia Parata tonight called an urgent press conference for 8pm with just over an hour’s notice to announce the Kohanga Reo National Trust had been cleared of any wrongdoing - though the report by Ernst & Young raised questions about the processes surrounding a $50,000 koha payment to an unnamed recipient, and credit card controls. But under questioning Parata and Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples confirmed none of the original allegations surrounding spending by the trusts commercial arm Te Pataka Ohanga were investigated. Parata said it was a private organisation so outside the Government’s scope – though it was later confirmed TPO ultimately receives its funding via the Ministry of Education. Labour MP Shane Jones slammed the report for failing to address the allegations.‘‘This head office has a culture covered in murk, this head office has been given a free pass by Dr Pita Sharples. The public supported kohanga reo ‘‘but the public is not up for feeding the appetites of their clandestine subsidiaries, he said. The urgent audit into the spending of taxpayer money aimed at helping children learn te reo was launched in October after claims of inappropriate credit card spending by managers of TPO. The allegations were aired on Maori TV’s Native Affairs programme which alleged that public funds were misused by Lynda Tawhiwhirangi, the general manager of TPO. Spending allegedly included the purchase of a wedding dress for Tawhiwhirangi’s daughter, the purchase of a Trelise Cooper dress, a 21st birthday present for a woman who was in a relationship with one of her sons and had carried out work experience at the trust, and a $1000 cash withdrawal from a BP station as koha for a tangi which she did not attend. TPO revealed when the investigation was launched that a staff member was stood down and that its credit cards had been cancelled. But the Ernst & Young review which looked into whether there were proper financial controls around the $92 million per year in public funding that kohanga received found there was no misuse of public money, Parata said tonight. It found the trust’s financial controls are effective for an operation of its size and complexity, but some improvements are needed around credit card returns and koha payments. ‘‘The trust is working through the review’s recommendations around accounts processing, documentation and the recording of koha. In the meantime, it has cancelled all credit cards.’’ Parata stressed that TPO was a subsidiary company owned by the trust and did not have any financial or contractual relationship with the ministry.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 21:26:05 +0000