It said Brown agreed to review the court files and give Kelly an \u201chonest opinion as to where you stand, no punches pulled\u201d.<\/p>\n
Kelly paid Brown a retainer of $2000 to cover 10 hours of investigative work and produce a report.<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s initial review found some key documents were missing from the files. <\/p>\n
There ended up being hundreds of pages of documents and CCTV footage to review.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Kelly began to ask Brown\u2019s opinion on various complaints he was planning to make to the Independent Police Conduct Authority<\/a> and the Privacy Commissioner<\/a>, which were not part of the contract.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hours of work covered by the retainer were exhausted before Mr Brown completed his report,\u201d authority chairwoman Trish McConnell said.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Brown\u2019s evidence is that Mr Kelly was happy with his work and complimented him on his thoroughness until the question of additional funding was broached.\u201d<\/p>\n Kelly consulted AI on what a PI should do<\/p>\n Kelly then turned to AI, asking it to summarise what a private investigator\u2019s responsibilities ought to be.<\/p>\n AI told him that a PI should identify potential suspects, uncover evidence that may have been overlooked and provide expert testimony.<\/p>\n On that basis, Kelly complained to the licensing authority that Brown\u2019s work was \u201cnot fit for purpose\u201d and he didn\u2019t do all the things AI said he should.<\/p>\n Kelly asked the authority to undertake a \u201cfull review\u201d of Brown\u2019s conduct and order him to refund the fee he had been paid.<\/p>\n He also asked for guidance on what further recourse was available if Brown\u2019s service had \u201cimpeded his criminal defence\u201d.<\/p>\n McConnell dismissed his complaint.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Brown did what he was contracted to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe reviewed the criminal files and wrote a report in which he gave his honest opinion in relation to gaps in the evidence, and the strength and weaknesses of the cases against Mr Kelly,\u201d McConnell said.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Brown spent more time on assessing the evidence supporting the charges against Mr Kelly and completing his report than was covered by the retainer paid.\u201d<\/p>\n McConnell said there was no reliable evidence that Brown contravened the Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Act 2010, or that he was guilty of misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct.<\/p>\n \u201cMr Kelly\u2019s complaint against Mr Brown is dismissed.\u201d<\/p>\n Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME\u2019s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke\u2019s Bay. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Details of the dispute between Kelly and the private investigator, named as David Brown, are included in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11689,74,9092,365,23070,1121,6636,1873,25598,52369,21137,9881,16718,293,17511,60505,14054,18220,111,43,139,69,10142,675,1136,16654,1560,61,13797,1316],"class_list":["post-102917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-11689","tag-after","tag-against","tag-ai","tag-assessment","tag-case","tag-challenge","tag-charges","tag-cleared","tag-client","tag-criminal","tag-facing","tag-him","tag-his","tag-honest","tag-investigator","tag-james","tag-kelly","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paid","tag-police","tag-private","tag-provide","tag-report","tag-to","tag-used","tag-when"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority chairwoman Trish McConnell dismissed the complaint. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n