Peters WinstonRt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): Today we expose fraud involving our largest meat exporter Silver Fern Farms. What happened at Silver Fern Farms is a disgrace because it involves unlawful covert behaviour and corruption and the regulators—the so-called new sheriffs in town—are again failing to do their job. I have faced that sort of behaviour from officialdom in the past. They did not succeed back then and they will not succeed now. We have an incompetent Financial Markets Authority (FMA) which finds no fault with Silver Fern Farms' information package to shareholders recommending they sell majority ownership or face receivership or liquidation when it contained outright lies—the profits were understated by 84 percent and the debt overstated by 24 percent. This is from a management lying to its ownership. How do we know that? The information given to the Chinese buyer was four times more substantial and for a 4-year period not a 1-year period. The information package for the Chinese utterly contradicts information given to the New Zealand farmer shareholders. The FMA and the Companies Office with the Chinese buyer information available but apparently unread by them find no sin in this sort of behaviour. To summate on 16 October 2015 the shareholders voted on a set of lies which were revealed 24 days later when the annual results of the company became known. They had been given a totally false financial picture. Every chief executive officer (CEO) reads the monthly accounts and every director sees the monthly management accounts. Yet Dean Hamilton its claimed CEO repeatedly lied to the media. He lied to journalist Allan Barber in early June when he said that an Overseas Investment Office decision before 30 June was an extremely serious event because Silver Fern Farms' banking facilities would lapse. Two days ago on The Country show he said that 30 June was not a problem". He is a serial deceiver. Three weeks ago it was extremely serious; this week it is not. The Silver Fern Farms board is either utterly incompetent or totally corrupt with the number of people with their nose in the trough. I am asking the management and board these questions. Is CEO Dean Hamilton an employee or a contractor billing Silver Ferns Farms over $100000 a month? Is it true that Goldman Sachs arranging the deal with Shanghai Maling received $695000 a month? The Companies Office and the FMA tell us that there is no wrong and Silver Fern Farms CEO Dean Hamilton says they have been vindicated. Well that is what Fay Richwhite said back then but when we got behind the charade we know what happened after that. We in this country do not like corporate troughers and lazy expensive bureaucrats protecting the establishment. So today we are exposing a racket at Silver Fern Farms for the bureaucrats to suck on. In 2009 Silver Fern Farms let a transport contract to a company called Livestock Logistics without a tender process. It was worth tens of millions of dollars. Livestock Logistics does not own trucks. Its challenge is to increase optimisation. In short it is a ticket-clipping middleman. So why was there no written contract between Silver Fern Farms and Livestock Logistics? Well I have got proof which I want to table today that Ernst and Young seeking to see the contract could not find a written contract. It gets worse. Up until 15 September the very day that the board recommended selling to the Chinese one man Brian William Bourke held 100 percent of the shares in Livestock Logistics. The other director was none other than Silver Fern Farms' chief operating officer Kevin Winders. These two go back to the PGG Wrightson days. Only in New Zealand can you stuff up one merger and land a far better job. For farmers their transport costs have gone up by over $16 million since 2007-08 to $66.6 million in 2015. There have been a million fewer lambs in 7 years yet farmer transport costs increased by over 40 percent. This is not an honest transaction—from the same directors who failed to tell the shareholders the truth and a management who had their fingers in the till. There is more to come in the following weeks but we are calling for an inquiry into Silver Fern Farms and Government agencies that have failed to protect small shareholders and worse set out to defraud them. Mr Barclay decided to call and try to get a meeting with Mr Hamilton. He was denied. All he got was a phone call. So over there is a backbench member who knows exactly what I am saying because he was expressing concern about the interest of the shareholders. He got fobbed off and he has not raised a finger in this House. That is a disgrace. My warning to Silver Fern Farms management and its board members is that if you think you are going to get away with this then look out for the court case that is coming for further exposures over the next few weeks. You are not going to lie to New Zealand farmers and New Zealand workers and get away with it. The National Party might allow that—the National Party might be provincial New Zealand - based and it has not raised a finger—but we are going to raise the roof until we get at the truth."