“The trust required Mr Tamihere to repay the loans made to a political party and political candidates, but then agreed to pay Mr Tamihere a bonus of the exact same amount as the loan he owed. The financial records of the trust showed that the bonus payment was offset against the loan the same day,” the decision said.
The CRB had earlier concluded the bonus resulted in “significant private benefits and financial advantage to the chief executive” when signalling it intended to deregister Waipareira in late 2024.
The trust told the CRB the bonus payment had been made “in light of Mr Tamihere’s extraordinary contribution to the success of the organisation”, but had since agreed it was “mistaken” to believe this was consistent with its charitable purpose.
The decision records Waipareira, to avoid deregistration, agreed to convert the bonus to a loan on interest-bearing commercial terms, and to once again demand repayment from Tamihere.
“The [Charities Registration] Board has been advised that the payment has in fact been made,” the decision reports.
The saga of the trust, the loans, Tamihere and his campaigns has dragged on since late 2019 when regulator Charities Services began investigating electoral disclosures that reported Waipareira had contributed $100,000 to Tamihere’s failed bid that year for the Auckland mayoralty.
Charities Services has long advised that it believes charitable activity cannot legally include partisan political activity or financing. It has previously taken legal action against Family First and Greenpeace over what it believed was illegal political campaigning by charities.
Waipareira later reclassified the mayoral campaign donation as a no-interest related-party loan to Tamihere, and the charity began advancing further campaign loans to Tamihere – eventually totalling $285,000 – to majority-fund Te Pāti Māori’s (TPM) 2020 general election campaign.
‘Go jump in the lake’ John Tamihere told a Herald reporter when questioned about a Charities report. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
In 2020, Tamihere was an ultimately unsuccessful electorate candidate for TPM. He later became, and remains, the party’s president. The party won six out of seven Māori electorates in the 2023 election but has recently been wracked by infighting that has resulted in its caucus shrinking to four.
In November 2020, Charities Services concluded the decision-making at Waipareira around these donations-cum-loans likely amounted to “serious wrongdoing” and “gross mismanagement” and a warning notice was issued.
Waipareira objected to that finding, and the Charities Services later withdrew and reissued a warning notice that no longer claimed serious wrongdoing or gross mismanagement.
The regulator and the charity appeared to have reached a settlement in early 2023 when Waipareira pledged to cease funding or supporting political parties or candidates, and agreed to demand its chief executive repay the still-outstanding $385,000 related party loan.
But with questions about whether this repayment had been made, and after fresh complaints about the trust hosting TPM’s 2023 campaign launch from the stage at Waipareira’s Matariki public event, the investigation was reopened.
It was at this point, the CRB decision suggests, that Charities Services investigators learned of the underlying bonus enabling the earlier loan repayment.
Waipareira’s financial reports for the year to June 2023 also recorded Waipareira’s key management personnel – of whom Tamihere is the most senior – had that year received a pay increase of 77% to become New Zealand’s highest-paid charity executives, each receiving an average of $510,679 per annum.
It is apparent this pay rise was in part because of Tamihere’s six-figure bonus payment.
In 2024, Charities Services concluded its investigation and towards the end of that year its governing body – the CRB – signalled to Waipareira it was intending to deregister the trust over its political donations and its provision of pecuniary benefits to Tamihere after concluding it amounted to “serious wrongdoing”.
Waipareira contested this intent in the High Court in May by judicially reviewing the CRB’s intended course of action. The trust won a pyrrhic victory in getting a ruling that the CRB was inquorate, but the court allowed the deregistration process to continue.
In a statement accompanying the decision, CRB chairwoman Jane Wrightson said: “This was a difficult and prolonged case with the test for ‘serious wrongdoing’ being necessarily high. The decision not to deregister was complex. Had significant remediation not been taken, the board’s decision would likely have been different.”
This remediation included Waipareira reversing Tamihere’s bonus and demanding repayment, appointing an independent advisory trustee, and the trust committing to refrain from supporting political candidates or parties in future.
Waipareira board chairman Raymond Hall told the CRB it would also be running a new framework to set executive remuneration at the trust to ensure it fell within appropriate market ranges.
The CRB noted that “to comply with its obligations as a registered charity the market should be that of the philanthropic sector and not that of private or commercial companies”.
Charlotte Stanley, director of Charities Services, said regulators had forced Waipareira to make significant governance and structure changes.
“This whole case highlights fundamental principles and regulatory requirements that all charities regardless of size or stature, should take seriously. These include the importance of good governance, that culture and board composition matter, that conflicts of interest and private benefits must be rigorously managed, and that fundraising must be in the charity’s best interests and subject to proper oversight,” Stanley said.
In June of this year, the Waipareira Group was dissolved and restructured. Waipareira Trust – the entity subject to the Charities Services investigation – was carved out as a standalone charitable entity.
Nine other entities formerly part of the Waipareira Group – but not the trust – were bundled into the newly-established Waipareira Investment Group. According to the charities register, trustees of the Waipareira Investment Group are identical to those of the trust.
“The trust will now be subject to additional monitoring by the department as these remedial steps are implemented, to ensure lasting change,” Stanley said.
Requests for comment to Tamihere and Waipareira about the CRB decision and settlement did not receive a reply before publication.
Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism – including twice being named Reporter of the Year – and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting from business newspapers and national magazines.
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