June 24, 2019
Kōhanga trustee refused to turn a blind eye
The lawyer for former Kōhanga Reo national trust board member says his client was not a whistleblower, but was fulfilling his statutory duty as a trustee when he informed Ministers they were not getting the full story from the trust.
Mr Waho was sacked from the trust in 2014 after raising concerns about its failure to investigate allegations of misuse of funds within its commercial subsidiary Te Pātaka Ohanga.
The High Court has confirmed his dismissal is unlawful, and ordered the trust to pay his legal fees of almost $600,000.
Felix Geiringer says what the court made clear is that any responsible trustee was obliged to act in the same way, and they should not carry the financial cost themselves.
"What Tony encountered was that there were many, many things that were not happening as they should be happening and in particular there were these allegations of wrongdoing, not just one or two but it turns out dozens of allegations of financial impropriety throughout the organisation that the organisation in his view was turning a blind eye to it," he says.
Mr Geiringer says as someone who has devoted his life to Māori education Mr Waho is disappointed the money, and the $1.8 million the trust spent fighting the case, could not be spent to meet the needs of tamariki.
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