Eight people have been charged after an investigation by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) “found a network of corruption” in the gambling sector in Hawke’s Bay.<\/p>\n
The DIA said it found collusion between class 4 venue operators, corporate societies and grant recipients.<\/p>\n
It said the charges “relate to the misappropriation of Class 4 (gambling) grant funds, theft of gaming machine proceeds and offering benefits to secure Class 4 (pokie) venues with improper conditions”.<\/p>\n
Three people appeared at the Napier District Court today, charged with a range of offences under the Gambling Act 2003 and Crimes Act 1961.<\/p>\n
The charges allege that the defendants, who were in management positions at several community organisations and within the Class 4 gambling sector, abused their positions to fraudulently obtain or misappropriate hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant funding and other benefits.<\/p>\n
One pleaded not guilty and two were remanded without plea.<\/p>\n
“Criminal networks that operate in a regulated environment such as class 4 gambling, commit this type of offending with full knowledge of the law. They ultimately take away grants from compliant and honest organisations and give the gambling sector a bad name.” DIA director gambling Vicki Scott said.<\/p>\n
“Prosecutions of this kind help us ensure the integrity and fairness of the gambling system.”<\/p>\n
The three defendants have been remanded and are due to appear in court over the coming months.<\/p>\n
The five remaining defendants have had their cases adjourned until February.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Eight people have been charged after an investigation by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) “found a network of corruption” in the gambling sector in Hawke’s Bay. The DIA said it found collusion between class 4 venue operators, corporate societies and grant recipients. It said the charges “relate to the misappropriation of Class 4 (gambling) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9030,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9028\/revisions\/9030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}