Last Straw

Someone with the user­name mag­nacarta has pos­ted a mes­sage on ACCforum.org today, entitled “Fraud At ACC,” alleging that doc­tors and ACC employ­ees have been scam­ming “sig­ni­fic­ant” amounts of money out of the Crown entity “over some con­sid­er­able period of time.” Although the web­site appears to have degen­er­ated into a huge bitchin ses­sion and the alleg­a­tions appear to be polit­ic­ally motiv­ated (or even a joke), they’re also pretty sen­sa­tional, which is a good enough reason to post them here:

More news has come to hand about alleged fraud at ACC.

Forum mem­bers will recall that claimant sup­port groups and indi­vidu­als firstly approached the police com­mis­sioner with alleg­a­tions that con­duct at ACC had stepped over the line from civil into the crim­inal jurisdcition.

You will recall that the com­plaint was sent to detect­ive ser­geant Robert Scott at Christ­ch­urch CIB and they are now with detect­ive inspector Win van der Veld at Police National HQ, but not all claimants who lodged com­plaints have been con­tac­ted or interviewed.

Now comes the news that things have been hap­pen­ing behind the scenes.

It has come to light that behind the scenes appar­ently ACC Min­is­ter Ruth Dyson has appoin­ted law firm Buddle Fin­lay (which just hap­pens to be former ACC chair­man David Caygill’s law firm) to invest­ig­ate yet more allegations.

These alleg­a­tions are that ACC employ­ees over some con­sid­er­able period of time allegedly arranged med­ical assess­ments and paid doc­tors to con­duct assess­ments on-the-papers on some claims without ever see­ing the par­tic­u­lar claimants.

The doc­tors then billed ACC for sig­ni­fic­ant amounts of money.

The cost of the assess­ment was put to the par­tic­u­lar claim but paid into a dif­fer­ent bank account with ACC employ­ees and the doc­tors allegedly split­ting the fees between them.

Sources say that when this comes out we wil be sur­prised with some of the names.

Any­way, selec­ted claimants are going to Wel­ling­ton to be inter­viewed by Buddle Finlay’s law­yers who are con­duct­ing this “investigation.”

Sources also say that some employee’s (man­agers) have been sacked but no pro­sec­u­tions while oth­ers have appar­ently been demoted and transferred.

Couped with the lim­ited invest­ig­a­tions of com­plaints by police, it now appears that the Min­is­ter is in dam­age con­trol so that she can say “Oh yes, I was made aware of this so I acted prudently and author­ised an investigation.”

If that scen­ario is cor­rect then it’s too little, too late, Minister.

Are the other polit­ical parties who have been jump­ing up and down in Par­lia­ment about lesser issues con­cerned at all when they have been advised — Not likely.

Infer­ences can there­fore be drawn.

Could one of those infer­ences be that the politi­cians are on the take by receiv­ing insider inform­a­tion about ACC’s share trans­ac­tions and then mak­ing a killing on the sharemarket.

Or could it be that these politi­cians don’t want to see their big busi­ness mates suf­fer if the whole ACC scheme is brought into dis­rep­ute because then they might have to take some respons­ib­il­ity for their poor work safe prac­tices and have to pay.

Big busi­ness loves the ACC scheme because it absolves them of liab­il­ity for massive damages.

And who do we know who sup­ports big busi­ness — Labour, National and Act. The Greens are shut­ting up and now don’t want to rock the boat because they want to see their mates (Labour) elec­ted. NZ First deputy Peter Brown is also disinterested.

Is all this why there is no inquiry from the petition.

The ACC scheme is not cor­rupt — the ACC scheme has been cor­rup­ted — from the top to the bottom.

The next poster has this ques­tion:

Why is a private sec­tor law firm in which the former chair­man of ACC is a part­ner, con­duct­ing an invest­ig­a­tion into alleg­a­tions of crim­inal beha­viour? Surely this is a mat­ter for the Police?