National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel.
The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23.
That was the day after Newsroom revealed a company controlled by the donors was being investigated for operating a crowded migrant hostel in east Auckland.
It would have been National’s second-largest donation in the election, behind the $500,000 (which may be New Zealand’s largest ever) given by Warren Lewis, who owns a network of window and door fabricators.
National Party president Sylvia Wood said, “It was prudent to return the donation from Buen Holdings once we learned of the investigation into the company’s owners.”
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Tenancy Services closed its investigation into the 553 square metre, $2.97m Shamrock Park house in September 2023 without identifying any breaches of the Residential Tenancies Act.
The directors of the company involved, (MK Trustee) Geumsoon Shim (known as Jean) and Lian Seng Buen, also owned and operated companies including Buen Holdings and health exporter Alpha Laboratories.
Shim said the investigation outcome proved they hadn’t done anything wrong.
The couple donated the $200,000 hoping a National-led government would support small businesses tangled up in excessive regulations, and back exporters to add value to their raw products.
As for the donation being returned, “I was the donation giver, they were the receiver. They didn’t want to receive it? Well that’s fine,” Shim said.
Alpha Laboratories is a contract manufacturer of oral dose supplements, employing 260 people at its Crooks Rd headquarters opened by former Prime Minister John Key in 2014.
They own the land and infrastructure involved in their extensive business empire, which exports nutraceuticals in hard and soft capsules, pills and liquid form to Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, and a small amount to China that they market under their own brand.
Nearly 95 percent of what they produce is shipped offshore.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon visited Alpha Laboratories and posed for a photo with Buen and Shim a month after he was first named as National’s Botany electorate candidate.
The pair say they didn’t know their tenant was renting out beds at $160 a week to 20 to 30 Southeast Asian migrant workers until they read it in the media; they had agreed he could sublet it to Airbnb guests.
They leased the house to him for $1500 a week, and the agreement, which they showed to Newsroom, required him to ensure any subletting arrangement complied with the law.
After Auckland Council served them an abatement notice in June, they evicted their tenant and everyone else living there.
They believed Tenancy Services was investigating that tenant for similar behaviour elsewhere in Auckland, though the organisation said it wasn’t investigating any of the tenants.
The couple moved out of the Del Mar Court house in late 2019, just before Covid – their three children were grown up and had left home, so they decided to downsize to a smaller house nearby.
“It was our family home. And we’d been there quite a long time, about eight years or 10 years,” Shim says. “Initially, I thought that we would move back to the house after Covid because I really missed living there, because we’d lived there so long. But we didn’t move back. And so we just decided to just lease it out. Then this thing happened.”
Complaints included periods without electricity and a lack of smoke alarms.
They leased it to the most recent tenant in March. At the time, it had brand-new smoke alarms in the corridors. “We did a big clean-up and some fixing and renovations to make sure that it was in the right standard to lease out. We did that. So there were smoke alarms, in all the corridors.
“We leased it out to this person and this person was operating his business there. And then he moved in and soon after, neighbours complained to the council,” Shim says. “We were contacted because of that. I wasn’t involved in sending workmen to do things, to rectify things.”
Well done! I renewed my subscription. We need you to bring such matters to light.