Winston Peters gets cleared by the SFO

Breaking News (updated 6:45pm )
This has recently broken. It was lawbreaking, but it wasn't fraud. The Serious Fraud Office has cleared New Zealand First of any fraudulent activity.But Helen Clark said tonight that he won't get his portfolios back because other inquiries were still being carried out and the election was close.

The SFO has been investigating the donations given by Sir Robert Jones and the Vela Family to the Spencer Trust, which then ended up with New Zealand First.

The SFO says its investigation has found no fraud, but other laws may have been broken. The issues raised are now matters for other agencies to address.

Peters had said it would take "about five minutes" to exonerate his party. He wasn't exactly exonerated but should be pretty pleased. He said the while SFO investigation was a waste of time.

My advice to the SFO is to go and find some real crooks in the dying days of their organization, which was set up in 1990 to fight serious white collar crime – a task it has failed miserably at.

The only complainant in this sorry episode was a sad little man in a yellow coat, so desperate for attention he used a tawdry stunt to tie up the resources of an agency that should have been investigating serious corporate crime.

Now, lets see Peters discuss Police resources in the same light given its penchant for ticketing speedsters on isolated roads to ensure that quotas are attained while people get mugged, murdered and robbed. Perhaps he'd like to comment on Miss Clark's statement that he wasn't going to get his portfolios back because the election is close.

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