Young Jonathan: Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Young Jonathan: Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:3857. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) 
: 
 I am very pleased to stand in support of the Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill which is sponsored by the Minister of Commerce Craig Foss. The Companies and Limited Partnerships Amendment Bill is outlined in National’s 120-point Economic Development Action Plan and the commerce election policy and falls under one of the Government’s four priorities this term which is to build a more competitive and a productive economy. National is focused as a party on boosting growth and this is another important step along that way. This bill seeks to strengthen rules applying to the governance registration and reorganisation of companies and limited partnerships. 
New Zealand does have a good international reputation as one of the best and most trusted places in the world to do business. It is quite surprising that after the introduction—the previous speaker Clayton Cosgrove mentioned it—of his anti - money-laundering bill we were taken off the white list. Obviously this work needs to continue in order to shore up our reputation which we are doing. Our reputation does stand under threat from overseas interests using New Zealand - registered shell companies to undertake criminal activity. One recent case was a company called S P Trading Ltd a New Zealand - incorporated company controlled from overseas which was involved in chartering a plane later used in weapons trafficking in contravention of United Nations sanctions. It was reported by the Stuff website that a former fast-food worker: “was the sole director of Queen St registered SP Trading Ltd a company that hired a plane discovered at Bangkok airport [in December 2009] flying 25 tonnes of arms from North Korea to an unknown destination believed to be Iran. [The person] pleaded guilty to 74 charges of giving false residential information to the Companies Office which registered multiple companies with [this person] as a director.” Such cases where foreign-controlled New Zealand companies are engaging in criminal activities are likely to seriously impact New Zealand’s international standing. These things happen and we must close the hole in the net by which these things do occur. Fish will always swim through the hole in the net and if our commerce laws have holes in them they will attract all sorts of unsavoury species who would seek to take advantage of the opportunities that can be exploited. It is imperative that we discover these vulnerabilities and we close them. 
The previous speaker talked about the World Bank’s report on the ease of starting a business in New Zealand—it being the easiest jurisdiction in the world. That is due to the ability of an overseas person or a person resident in New Zealand being able to register a company here via the internet. If the person is overseas they can do that with no apparent intention of operating in New Zealand. It creates an acceptable shop front to an unacceptable backroom criminal activity as we saw in that previous case. We know that the Companies Office has already been responsive to this situation to this vulnerability that we find in closing down this anomaly. It has already as the Minister of Commerce mentioned removed nearly 2600 at-risk companies from the register since 2010 when these matters were discovered. 
The measures in this bill are linked to other work aimed at deterring money-laundering and making it easier for New Zealand’s law-enforcement agencies to find out the ultimate owners of companies. This bill will aid in stamping out this kind of behaviour and help ensure New Zealand remains a trusted place to do business. Thank you.