By 3 News online staff / NZN
Labour wants ACT MP John Banks to stand down while an investigation is carried out into secret donations made to his Auckland mayoral campaign.
The hardline former Police Minister could face up to two years behind bars if he's found to have acted outside electoral laws in his handling of donations from internet tycoon Kim Dotcom and casino operator Sky City.
Mr Banks listed the alleged donations from Mr Dotcom, totalling at least $50,000, as anonymous. The donations were to assist with his ill-fated 2010 Auckland mayoral campaign.
Labour leader David Shearer says Mr Banks should stand aside, pending an investigation.
"He either received the donations anonymously, therefore he didn't know who had sent them, or he did know and wrote them down as anonymous, which of course is wrong," says Mr Shearer.
"It's a very simple question which he needs to answer."
Prime Minister John Key is siding with Mr Banks, for the time being.
Speaking on TVNZ's Breakfast programme this morning, Mr Key called the scandal a "sideshow".
"I think that's a political sideshow, frankly ... At the end of the day, he either complied with the law or he didn't - he said he did, I have absolutely no reason to doubt him," Mr Key said.
He had been given assurances by Mr Banks that he complied with local government regulations and laws, and accepted his word - but had not directly asked about the Dotcom donation, saying "that's not my responsibility".
"If somebody thinks that John Banks isn't telling the truth, there's a very simple remedy: they go to the police.
"That's not my job to do a forensic investigation, my job is to assure myself I can retain confidence in a minister. If he tells me he followed the local government laws, then I accept him at his word."
Mr Banks claims he doesn't remember conversations about the donations. Mr Dotcom however says Mr Banks actually rang him to thank him for the donations - two payments of $25,000. One was made in the name of his company, Megastuff, and another in the name of his bodyguard, Wayne Tempero.
Former ACT MP David Garrett yesterday claimed Mr Dotcom went public after Mr Banks refused to help him when he was being held in Mt Eden Prison, following the raid on his property in January at the behest of US law enforcement authorities.
Mr Garrett, who resigned from Parliament in disgrace in 2010 after it emerged he once acquired a passport in the name of a deceased infant, wrote on the right-wing Kiwiblog site that he had it "on good authority that the Dotcom donation(s) have emerged because Banks didn't want to know the fat man in his hour of need in Mt Eden".
"Apparently Dotcom was being badly treated in some way and asked who the MP for the Mt Eden Prison area was ... but said MP was most ungracious to his beneficent donor, and didn't want a bar of him ... didn't even know him ... Said beneficent donor took great umbrage at this ... as you would ... and decided to tell all."
Mr Banks says allegations he asked for the donation to be split into two so he could list them as anonymous was "BS".
"Everything that needs to be said has been said," he told the New Zealand Herald. "I'm very happy to talk to any inquiry about this. Nothing to fear, nothing to hide."
Labour's Trevor Mallard says today he will lay a complaint with police.
3 News / RadioLIVE / NZN