Post by kokonutwoman on Sept 3, 2008 5:54:14 GMT 12
Innocent reason assumed by Clark
By TRACY WATKINS - The Dominion Post | Wednesday, 03 September 2008
Prime Minister Helen Clark says she assumed there must be an "innocent explanation" for conflicting accounts of billionaire expatriate's Owen Glenn's $100,000 donation to Winston Peters.
As Parliament's privileges committee prepares to meet again tomorrow to discuss the funding controversy, Miss Clark revealed that she received emphatic denials from the NZ First leader the four times she questioned him about Mr Glenn's insistence that he had contributed to Mr Peters' cause.
Mr Glenn told her of the donation, which went to Mr Peters' legal fund, in February. At the same meeting, he alluded to his interest in being appointed New Zealand's honorary consul in Monaco. Miss Clark did not reveal the conversation till last week.
National Party leader John Key asked yesterday why Miss Clark did not take the matter further when it involved her foreign affairs minister "soliciting a large donation from a person who was seeking to become the honorary consul in Monaco".
Miss Clark said she assumed both men believed themselves to be telling the truth. The committee is likely to have asked Mr Glenn to expand tomorrow on his testimony last week contradicting Mr Peters' claim that he knew nothing about the $100,000.