Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader
Member of Parliament for Northland
30 JUNE 2016
General Debate: Z Parliament 29 June, 2016
Silver Fern Farms
Hansard: Rt 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, or 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, and
when it contained outright lies. The profits were understated by 84 percent and the debt overstated by 24 percent.
This is from 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, and 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, 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, and 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 facility 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 $100,000 a month? Is it true
that Goldman Sachs, arranging the deal with Shanghai Maling, received $695,000 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 led 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 that 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 went up by $16 million in 2007-08 to $66.6 million in 2015. A million fewer lambs in
7 years, yet farmer transport costs increased by almost 27 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, worst, 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 has not raised a finger, but we are going to raise the roof
until we get at the truth.
ENDS