WELLINGTON, Jun 22 (NNN-XINHUA) – Michael Wood has resigned as a minister of the New Zealand government, over multiple conflicts of interest, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said.
Hipkins said, he was alerted to “additional shareholdings” Wood held in the JM Fairey Family Trust, of which he is both a trustee and a beneficiary. The fact was found after Wood’s resignation as the transport minister earlier this month, due to controversy of his Auckland airport shares.
These shareholdings raise significant concern about Wood “not identifying and managing potential real conflicts of interest,” Hipkins said, adding, in particular, the trust shares in telecommunications companies such as Chorus and Spark, as well as, the National Australia Bank.
“As Minister of Immigration, Michael made the decision to include telecommunications technicians on the immigration Green List. This followed representations from the telecommunications industry, including Chorus, seeking those changes to the Green List,” Hipkins said.
Wood also has a shareholding in the National Australia Bank, the parent company of Bank of New Zealand. However, that was not disclosed in any of the conversations cabinet had around a market study into banking, or other relevant cabinet conversations, the prime minister said.
On the Auckland airport shares, Wood did not declare his shares immediately, when he became a Member of Parliament (MP), or when he became the transport minister.
Wood purchased the shares of the Auckland International Airport, worth about 13,000 NZ dollars (7,900 U.S. dollars), when he was a teenager in the 1990s.
He declared the shares to the Cabinet Office when he became a minister in 2020. However, he failed to declare them in the public register of MPs’ assets and other interests until 2022, local media reported.
Wood said he did not disclose them as he thought the shares had been sold.– NNN-XINHUA
