Thai link in NZ MP's graft sentence
Published: 6/10/2009 at 01:22 PM WELLINGTON - A sacked New Zealand government minister who used his cabinet position to help Thai nationals get permanent residence in return for free labour on houses he owned in Samoa and New Zealand has been jailed for six years.
Samoan-born Taito Phillip Field was jailed on charges of bribery, corruption and perverting the course of justice.
He is the first member of the New Zealand parliament to ever be convicted of bribery and corruption.
Field became the first Pacific Island-born legislator in New Zealand when he was elected in 1993.
Justice Rodney Hansen on Tuesday sentenced Field to four years jail on the bribery and corruption charges and another two years for perverting the course of justice.
The 57-year-old was also convicted of trying to obstruct an inquiry called into his dealings with the Thais.
Justice Hansen said bribery was intolerable in New Zealand, threatening democracy and justice, adding Field had let people down who had trusted him.
"You breached that trust and undermined the very institutions it was your duty to uphold," he said.
Field was an associate minister of Pacific Island Affairs in the previous Labour Party-led government of Helen Clark, which lost power in elections last year.
His ministerial responsibilities were taken off him in 2007 after the allegations surfaced and he left the Labour Party before last year's elections, in which he ran under his own party but lost his seat in parliament.
He was convicted in August this year and appeared for sentence on Tuesday.
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