“Lie” (verb)…to say or write something that is not true in order to deceive someone
Towards the end of my 15 year tenure as Rabobank New Zealand’s head lawyer it became intolerably apparent that Rabobank was lying to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
Under Law Society Rules, in-house lawyers are not at liberty to ignore unethical organizational behaviour. They are required do something. So I did. I became a “whistle-blower” and told the Reserve Bank what Rabobank was up to, handing our banking regulator the supporting evidence on a plate (not a real plate).
And what did the Reserve Bank do? Nothing much. Unfortunately, rather than assess the matter and take appropriate action, the Reserve Bank instead appointed an “independent” investigator to ostensibly look into what was going on. That was the first telling sign the Reserve Bank simply didn’t want to know what I was saying. To my burgeoning amazement, it became increasingly clear, from my interactions with Reserve Bank staff and the investigator, that the investigation was a sham and that, for the Reserve Bank, the problem was not Rabobank - it was…ME.
The investigator duly delivered his report, which I was told (and have no reason to doubt) exonerated Rabobank - but which the Reserve Bank refused to give me. The whole saga was Kafkaesque and demoralizing and I was grateful to be able to take redundancy and leave Rabobank at the end of 2020 when Rabobank moved its head office to Hamilton (there’s a story there too…for another day).
Rabobank’s lies to the Reserve Bank were multi-faceted. One facet was a failure to fulfil repeated promises to the Reserve Bank to create New Zealand-specific Board committees for Rabobank New Zealand Limited, and lying to the Reserve Bank that such committees had been established (when they hadn’t). Below, for downloading if you’re interested, is my account of that fabrication, complete with the incontrovertible documentary evidence.
Investigations of the sort that the Reserve Bank purported to arrange in response to my whistle-blowing are specifically excluded from the ambit of the Official Information Act. It’s therefore not possible to obtain, under that Act, either a copy of the investigator’s “report” or any information held by the Reserve Bank regarding my whistle-blowing.
I did, however, require to the Reserve Bank, under the Privacy Act, to provide all personal information held about me. The results were revealing in two respects.
First, my suspicion was dead right that the Reserve Bank regarded me, not Rabobank’s conduct, as the real problem. Once it had become abundantly clear that the Reserve Bank was not willing to do its job, I let Reserve Bank staff know, justifiably and in no uncertain terms, of my disappointment. Which the Reserve Bank didn’t like, not one little bit.
In the Reserve Bank’s Register of External Complaints
the Issue was stated as “McLean is a whistle-blower who alleged serious wrong-doing at Rabobank. The Bank undertook a s 95 review in response and McLean does not accept the findings”
the Risk manifestation was stated as “McLean has threatened to talk to the media. He has raised the issue already with the Minister of Finance”
the Risk rating was stated as “Low. The Bank followed up his allegations with an independent process; the issue is obscure and the Bank can rely on confidentiality protections to avoid commenting if the matter does go public. There is also the issue of McLean’s own behaviour during the process undermining his credibility.”
So my expressed disaffection with the Reserve Bank’s malfeasance was regarded as undermining my credibility. Never mind the Reserve Bank’s credibility in this matter which you, dear reader, can judge for yourself.
I had indeed approached the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, about my concerns with how the Reserve Bank was handling my whistle-blow. The Minister was the designated person for me to go to, under New Zealand’s whistle-blowing legislation. The Minister’s shallow reply was simply to state the bleeding obvious; that the Reserve Bank had instigated an “independent” investigation. But the response to my personal information request also revealed something else…
Rather than dispassionately assess my complaint and respond on the merits, the Minister of Finance abrogated his responsibility and simply asked the Reserve Bank – the very organisation I was complaining about - to prepare “his” reply. Here’s the revealing exchange of emails…
So what can we make of this? First and foremost (and contrary to the statement in the Reserve Bank’s complaints register that “the issue is obscure”), there’s no ambiguity about what happened here; Rabobank repeatedly lied to the Reserve Bank and the Reserve Bank, presented with the evidence, chose to whitewash the matter. Manifestly the Reserve Bank has no appetite for properly performing its prudential supervisory duties. It would much rather get on with its monetary activities; that's the bit where it drives the knife into our once plucky nation by printing stacks of money, creating runaway inflation and colluding with Government to put us into whopping national debt, then sticks the knife in even deeper and twists it by ramping up interest rates.
Lastly, if you think the Reserve Bank is alone in being insular, defensive, cowardly and generally useless, think again, read my earlier Substack on our Financial Markets Authority and check out the treatment that Pharmac meted out to journalist Rachel Smalley. Our Government agencies urgently require make-overs, ones that are much more than skin-deep.