Hubbard's Cupboard - & Conflict Of Interest!

If Godzone's officialdom has a blind spot about anything, it's Conflict Of Interest.

Now i don't pretend to know all the ins & outs of what actually happened to bring down South Canterbury Finance, beyond the fairly clear evidence (according to People Who Should Know) that some of Aorangi Securities's lending practices were not entirely kosher.


There was, however, one little detail that puzzled me greatly..

AFAIK, when a company gets into 'difficulties', the usual practice is to put the company under statutory management or equivalent.  So far, so ok..  No problem there; it's what any normal person would expect.
But it wasn't just Aorangi that got clobbered!  
Why was it necessary to put Alan Hubbard & his wife on the scaffold, so to speak?


As i said, that puzzled me..  until something slimy crawled out from under its stone!
Whom do i believe?  
Hubbard's supporters? 
The Securities Commission?
Hubbard himself?
The Government?  According to the NZ Herald article:

"Labour has been putting pressure on the Government
 to be fully transparent about its handling of SCF, 
 and has called for a commission of inquiry.
 Hubbard supporters have also 
 called for a public inquiry, 
 but yesterday Prime Minister John Key said 
 he didn't see a need for that."

Maybe the situation isn't as rotten as the NZ Rail debacle back in the day..
I read somewhere that if Fay Richwhite had done what they did in the US, they'd've faced a jail term.  It does seem quite bizarre that an entity, any entity, can act as a consultant to the Government on how to prepare a government department for privatization, then change hats, so to speak, & front up as a potential buyer for the same aforementioned department - it's called Insider Trading, it's illegal in the US & several other countries, but Tranz Rail stumbled on, pushed this way & that, subjected to Asset Stripping & morphing into various other commercial shapes until finally Helen Clark's Labour Government bought the bloody thing back for $665M..

The reverse side of the Conflict of Interest coin is the incompetence shown by various entities, public & private, in vetting applicants for senior positions.   The latest example is Stephen Wilce (hehe) but various high-profile cases have been in the news in recent months..