Smear campaign alleged

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 4

Smear campaign alleged

PA Wellington The financial adviser at the centre of the Maori loans affair early this year was trying to carry out his threat to embarrass the Government, said the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, yesterday. Mr Max Raepple yesterday issued an “open letter to the people of New Zealand.” He called for an independent inquiry into the affair, in which he was alleged to haye helped organise an unauthorised loan of SUS3OO million for the Department of Maori Affairs. He made the call after what he described as a “smear campaign” against him had spread from New Zealand to the West In-

dies. Mr Lange yesterday dismissed Mr Raepple. The timing of the letter “full of weird allegations,” was significant, he said. "He promised ... to embarrass me before the election. I don’t see anything remotely embarrassing about that letter from Mr Raepple.” Mr Raepple had threatened to sue him at the time of the loans affair, but had not done so, he said.

Mr Raepple said in a statement that he realised elections would soon be held in New Zealand, but had been forced to break his “intended silence” on the loans affairs because of an article published

recently in a West Indian newspaper. The article was “slanderous” and “merely a poor imitation of your Prime Minister’s false statements,” Mr Raepple

We newspaper, the “Nation” in Barbados, quoted the Chief Minister of the West Indian island of Montserrat, Mr John Osborne, as saying Mr Raepple had offered “to act as a broker for the Government” after arriving with “a stack of credentials.”

In the press statement with the letter, Mr Raepple said he was “extremely sorry” to restart the matter, but “I am now forced to break my intended silence, which perhaps’ has already been interpreted as ‘guilt,’ by sending an open letter to the people of New Zealand.”

The open letter of about 500 words complains

about the attacks made on him by Mr Lange. “I verily believe my name and reputation have been maligned by these false accusations and uncleared Insinuations originating from your Prime Minister," Mr Raepple said. The open letter repeated Mr Raepple’s own account of his role in the Maori loans affair and ends, ■’

“Now — I find — is the time for the people of New Zealand to ask their Primo Minister in the tradition of a democratic society with high regard for the rights or the individual and your historical sense of fairness to clear my name or, if he cannot for ■■ political reasons, to at least set up an independent inquiry to establish the facts and — as a result — my innocence in this matter.

“May I rely on your help?”