Archive for October 2013
Request for councillors to Investigate Fraud concealment in Auckland council
Sent: Monday, 14 October 2013 6:51 p.m.
To: Councillor Cathy Casey; Councillor Christine Fletcher; Mayor Len Brown
Subject: Congratulations and request for meeting
First of all congratulations to all of you.
I hope that you have got a better Idea of what I have been up against these past 7 ½ years. The corruption I questioned is pretty much the same as what the prosecution has been for on the north shore and the investigation is about in Auckland Transport .
The manager whose actions I questioned contracted council services to himself using a pseudonym
He also rebranded the council premises as per attached and if you look at the flow chart you will see how the fraud worked.
I have been told this is historic but it was operating in 2010 and so were these other frauds which have been actioned.
No whistle-blower should have to endure what I have been exposed to . I request an urgent meeting so that we can start dealing with this matter before I have to sell my house because of councils neglect to investigate.
I look forward to hearing from you all
Regards
Grace Haden
To: Grace Haden; Councillor Christine Fletcher; Mayor Len Brown
Cc: Jazz Singh; Doug McKay
Subject: RE: Congratulations and request for meeting
Hi Grace,
The last time you asked to meet with us, the advice that Councillor Fletcher and I received from legal counsel is that all of your allegations have been exhaustively investigated and there is no action that we as councillors can take.
If you have any new evidence, please provide that to our legal department.
I am copying in CEO Doug McKay and Acting General Counsel Jazz Singh.
Kind regards,
Dr Cathy Casey
Councillor, Albert-Eden-Roskill Ward
Governing Body, Auckland Council
Sent: Tuesday, 15 October 2013 10:23 a.m.
To: ‘Councillor Cathy Casey’; ‘Councillor Christine Fletcher’; ‘Mayor Len Brown’
Cc: ‘Jazz Singh’; ‘Doug McKay’
Subject: RE: Congratulations and request for meeting
Thank you Cathy
I have been somewhat unfortunate to have had Bias directed at me by your counsel Wendy Brandon . I have sent her evidence which any competent lawyer would recognise as being a conflict of interest in a mangers role however she responded that she refuses to investigate .
I have supplied tons of evidence , I can conclusively prove that there was no trust in existence and the manager was using council resources and infrastructure for self-enrichment. He was contracting to himself using a pseudonym. I think the vital ingredient all along has been is that Mr Wells is a colleague of Bob Harvey and there is also involvement of former mayor Wyn Hoadley . This is serious corruption and the councils lack of action has had major repercussions on me and my family.
I should have been able to ask the simple question Why is a manager contracting to himself without fear of losing my home. Council appear to have learnt nothing from this as I am dismissed as some freak.
Just in the past week globally there have been a number of fraud incidents where mayors and councillors have been involved in fraud , it won’t happen in Auckland as we have great control measures within which ensure cover ups. I have I believe conclusively proved that
Ruling-party mayor arrested in Venezuela crackdown
28 years in prison for corrupt ex-Detroit mayor
Greek ex-minister jailed for 20 years for graft
Spanish court convicts 53 in corruption trial
Just because former mayors are associated with the fraud does not mean that there is no fraud. I can appreciate that there is a huge amount of influence within council which has stopped this from being investigated. I am sure that Waitakere council fully knew what was going on but in the words of mission impossible they would have said “ if you are exposed we will disavow any knowledge of your action. “ The on going proof of this is the fact that I could not even get a straight response to my LGOIMA requesting why the branding at the concourse changed from Animal welfare to animal management. When council knowingly conceals corruption it condones it .
I have spent nearly 8 years hitting my head against a brick wall. The very people who should investigate have not done so . I am a Fraud professional I have the evidence – it is conclusive , real and verifiable . I have given it to your lawyers and your CEO multiple times and I am discredited in return.. A good policy is to attack the person when you cannot attack the issue , I am sick of being discredited and I am sick of being bled dry by your former employee who is using the charitable funds of a retrospectively set up trust to do as much damage to me as possible. A proper council investigation would have prevented that- Most of the evidence is on your files! That is why I am again approaching the councillors.
Cathy it was good to learn that you have a degree in criminology as such you may appreciate this perfect fraud .. it was a perfect fraud until I came along – few people would have picked up what I discovered, my mistake was to ask the question of accountability from council. I was taken to court for defamation and denied a defence of truth and honest opinion, NO EVIDENCE was ever produced and the court simply skipped the formal proof hearing, its like being sentenced without being found guilty ! .
I have never done anything but speak the truth, the price I have paid is excessive that is why I stood and I am sure with the number of hits on my site that I have drawn attention to the issue .
Wendy Brandon falsely claims that there is an injunction, there is no injunction against AWINZ. AWINZ (Animal welfare Institute of New Zealand ) does not exist, it had an appearance of existing and it was your staff, buildings and vehicles which gave it that appearance.. very clever really.
The only injunction is against me saying nasty things about Mr wells, so I say nothing bad about him and only confine myself to producing documents which show what he has done, I frequently ask him if there is anything I have published which he wasn’t correcting and not once in the past 7 years has he objected to anything or taken me back to court.
Cathy I Made another Request for Auckland council to investigate corruption last year and the end result was that Wendy Brandon had my emails diverted to exclude councillors . You have all the evidence- what is the point of giving you more when you won’t look at what you have .
I even made a complaint with regards to the conduct of counsel to council but it appears to be a diverted email which only Ms Brandon received see Urgent call for the suspension of Wendy Brandon there was supposed to be an investigation into her blocking my emails and that disappeared into thin air. In return I was harassed by council and a person claiming to be W is posting the obscene things directed at me on web sites belonging to my associates .
I can go blue in the face sending evidence to Ms Brandon she simply will not look at it that is why I am addressing this to councillors because you employ the CEO and he employs the counsel. If counsel does not take corruption seriously then that is an issue for the governing body.
If you allow this fraud to be concealed then I can only ask what else is going on., I am making a determined effort to expose the corruption in Auckland council and have already started with my latest LGOIMA where I have addressed the issue of some 55 million of undefined “ other “ employee benefits in excess of last years 8 million “ other benefits “ which are shown in your annual report Council Employee Benefits v Mowing verges
Cathy so here we go another three years of me being fobbed off. What do I need to do to get some one to look at the evidence. I am very happy to sit down with them and take them through it but in 7 years that has never occurred.
In my normal transparent manner I will be publishing this on Transparency .net.nz
I won’t hold my breath I know I will be ignored again. After all electioneering is over and were back as usual.
You will be hearing a lot from me I would love to meet with you and Christine as this is a governance issue it is very serious.
Regards
Grace Haden
Council Employee Benefits v Mowing verges
Back on the subject of Mowing Verges
Len Brown when he heard he had won said he would go out an celebrate by mowing his Berm this prompted me to look at how big his berms were and I noted that he might mow them but it also seems that he can use them for parking, the address is 8 Tiffany close have a look for yourself on Google earth , Google maps or wises.
Perhaps this is an employee Benefit ?
Maybe if we had a house like his an income of some $200,000 then we wouldn’t begrudge mowing the berms, the chances are the mowing contractor would be doing it .. For the rest of us there is nothing like paying for a service and then doing the work yourself and not being allowed to park on it.
I had asked by way of LGOIMA as to the policy for mowing verges, we are told it went through council yet in this email I have been clearly redirected to Auckland Transport as follows
Dear Grace
Thank you for your response.
As your enquiry requires more detailed information about the berm mowing policy, we have referred it to Auckland Transport.
You can expect to receive a reply from them directly within 10 working days.
Should you wish to follow up on this enquiry, please contact Auckland Transport on (09) 355 3553.
In the mean time, you may wish to read through the information provided on the Auckland Transport website in regard to urban berm mowing:
Nāku noa nā | Regards
Emma Powell
Written Communications Team
Auckland Council
(09) 301 0101
So I shall wait for Auckland transport to reply, I actually don’t pay rates to Auckland transport , I pay them to the council who owns the grass verges .
Yet we are saving 15 million in not mowing them.. this pales into insignificance in light of this item in the annual report
I have addressed this in a LGOIMA request via FYI. as follows
Dear Auckland Council,
In your annual report item 7 (www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/planspoli…) you list the following
7 EMPLOYEE BENEFITS ( millions )
Other 2013 Group 42 million 2012 7 million
2013 Council 21 million 2012 1 million
Please give a breakdown of the 35 million difference in the group
benefits between last annual report and current report and also the
20 million difference in the council benefits
Please also advise the number of employees council has and how many
of them benefited from these benefits and also detail how these
benefits were approved.
Yours faithfully,
Grace Haden
Will keep you posed I will be sure to bring the parking on the berm to the attention of Auckland transport if it si good enough for Len then is good enough for all of us.
Low wages for council workers
Last night I attended a meet the candidates meeting at Mt Albert Baptist church. I heard Cathy Casey say that the council had been addressed by the lady who cleans the town hall who had 6 children and was on $14.00 per hour Cathy said that this lady was employed by Spotless cleaning.
I note that spotless on their web site states “Spotless Group is an Australian owned, managed and operated provider of integrated facility management services. ” Why are we paying an Australian corporate to employ locals and pay them peanuts to do the work which these very same people could do if they were employed directly. How many employees are there how much is the contract worth ? We would probably be able to pay these people a much better hourly rate if we employed them directly through a council cleaning division.
Council owns film studios so why not a cleaning division which provides direct contract to cleaners. Why does everything need to be contracted to multinationals why in the interim can we not utilize local companies or is it that the contracts are now so big that locals cannot compete.
I have noted that Auckland council is influenced by members of the committee for Auckland and the New Zealand council for infrastructure
It therefore comes as no surprise that spotless cleaning is a member of the NZ council for Infrastructure the very organization which pushed for the super city and the very organization which first came up with the phrase ” most livable city ”
I have submitted a LGOIMA request to seek the number of persons employed by spotless on council contracts and the value of that contract see the FYI request here
Last week this news Item appeared Spanish court convicts 53 in corruption trial the scene is totally set for this in Auckland council . but new Zealand defends its least corrupt status so much that it has got to the stage where corruption is condoned.