- Executive summary reveals Darleen Tana continued her involvement with E Cycles despite selling shares in April 2019.
- She failed to disclose the personal grievance raised by an ex-employee against the company to the Green Party in 2020 and 2023.
- Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has urged Tana to resign from Parliament.
The Green Party has released the executive summary of its report into what former Green MP, now independent, Darleen Tana knew about allegations of migrant exploitation at her husband’s bike company, E Cycles.
It comes as Act leader David Seymour, also acting Prime Minister, says the Green Party should not invoke the waka-jumping legislation to kick Tana out of Parliament if she doesn’t heed the party’s call to leave.
A key plank of Tana’s defence was that she sold her shareholding in April 2019 and ceased active involvement with the company then.
However, the report said that after that date she continued to be involved with the company and that at times that involvement was “extensive”. Tana has disputed aspects of the report, by lawyer Rachel Burt, and the process used to complete it.
The precise level of involvement varied.
“In summary, it seems her day to day operational involvement in E Cycles reduced around mid-2019, but she continued over the following three years to support and assist the business.
“At times this assistance was extensive, and at other times she provided more back office supervisory support - payroll oversight, assistance with holiday pay calculations, relief work in shops to cover staff absence, and support and liaison with company lawyers,” the executive summary said.
“Even in Darleen’s own documents, different dates are provided regarding her employment stint as E Cycles. Documents referenced include for example, her Green Party CV 2022, her LinkedIn Profile, her candidate bio, her evidence to the Authority regarding Employee A’s claims.
The report recounted a personal grievance laid against the company on 11 January 2019 by Churck Simpson, while Tana was still a director and shareholder of the company.
Simpson worked briefly in “Green Wheels” a Blenheim shop, run as a related entity of E Cycles. Simpson resigned from that job after two weeks, saying the shop was in “chaos” and that both suppliers and employees were not being paid. The company lawyer refused mediation, and Simpson took the case to the Employment Relations Authority (ERA).
The review notes that very shortly after this, and before her company responded to the Authority claim, Tana ceased to be a director of E Cycles and of Green Wheels. The ERA eventually ruled in Simpson’s favour.
Tana told the reviewer, she was not aware of the personal grievance, however the review found “Darleen was expressly named in the grievance letter as being one of the employers, or key representatives of the employer”.
“Darleen did not attend the eventual mediation or the Authority meeting, and so did not appear to take any steps to assist in resolving the dispute,” the review said.
Tana did not raise that incident with the Greens in 2020 when she applied to be a candidate at the election, or in 2023 when she was applied again.
In a separate case involving another employee, Nick Scott, the review said Tana’s husband Christian Hoff-Nielsen had presented evidence that “was shown to be incorrect” and “appeared to be done to try and damage Nick’s credibility
“When talking about Darleen’s involvement in the business he was inconsistent about the extent of her involvement over different periods, and accused the investigator of tampering with his transcript, which was incorrect. He told me Darleen was out of the business at the time Nick was employed, but also was still, ‘overlooking it’,” the review said.
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick walks away after speaking with media about the Tana report. Photo / Mark Mitchell
In the case of a pay dispute with a former employee, the reviewer found WhatsApp messages that show Tana’s “ongoing involvement” with the business, even after she has been removed as a director and divested her shares.
In the case of Santiago Latour Palma, one of the most prominent former E Cycle employees in the media, the review found Tana had made “inconsistent accounts” of her involvement which “damaged her overall credibility”.
“I found it was not credible Santiago did not raise his issues with Darleen, given the nature of their relationship, which I understood was very friendly, and given Darleen retained some oversight at E Cycles. While I accept her involvement was far less than it had been, Darleen acknowledged she still checked in on stores, and was the connection point when Christian was away on an extended holiday, as explained to staff,” the review said.
The extent of Tana’s disclosures to the Green Party is important because the Greens’ code of conduct for candidates requires candidates to keep the party informed of incidents like this that might have an impact on perceptions of the party.
Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick reiterated her calls for Tana, no longer a Green MP, to quit Parliament altogether.
“It is in the best interests of everyone that she resigns,” Swarbrick said.
“This Executive Summary makes it very clear that Darleen has failed to meet the standards we expect - not only of MPs within our Caucus, but across Parliament entirely,” Swarbrick said.
“Darleen was given multiple opportunities to be upfront about the serious allegations she was facing but chose to obfuscate instead of answering straightforward questions, prompting the need for an independent investigation.
“Now the public can see why Caucus was unanimous in requesting Darleen’s resignation from Parliament.
“We are deeply disappointed that Darleen Tana has not been forthcoming about nor taken accountability for very serious breaches of our kaupapa, nor even acknowledged the impact of her behaviour on others.”
Should Tana refuse the Greens’ call, the party had the option to use the so-called waka jumping legislation which allowed the party to write to the Speaker of the House arguing Tana’s ejection from the Greens impacted the proportionality of the House.
The rarely-used legislation, strongly supported by New Zealand First, had been long opposed by the Greens but Swarbrick had been vague on whether the party would use it.
Seymour said the power to remove an MP from Parliament should remain with the voting public through the electoral process.
“As soon as you go down the track of allowing Members of Parliament to push other members out of Parliament, you can get to some very dark places,” Seymour said, citing similar actions by the Nazis in Germany.
“It convinced me of the principle that we should never accept a political system where representatives who are put in there by the voters can then be pushed out by other MPs.”
Asked whether Tana had a mandate to remain given she was a list MP, Seymour said that was the question Tana should be asking herself.
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