"Pooh!... I don't know how you can stand that, mate... Someone's gutted their catch and just left it!" "No worries!... I'm on the Otago District Health Board - we can't smell anything fishy!" 14 December, 2008.

A man comments as he walks past a pile of gutted fish remains on a beach that he doesn't know how the man sitting in a deckchair nearby can stand the smell. The deckchair man, who may be Richard Thomson, the Chairman of the Otago District Health Board, or else one of the two men who actually committed the fraud. The man says he is on the Otago District Health Board and cannot smell anything fishy. Context - Refers to the conviction for fraud of two of Richard Thomson's staff; Thomson himself was held accountable and eventually replaced, though not before he had told Tony Ryall that he wasn't going to resign and that Ryall should show the courage of his convictions and sack him, because the fraud had begun before he had even joined the ODHB and he himself had initiated the investigation which brought the matter to a head. A defiant Mr Thomson told NZPA he believed the real motivation to sack him was because he was a Labour Party member. Mr Ryall's decision reeked of political interference, he said. The fraud actually involved the DHB's former chief information officer Michael Swann and his friend and business associate Kerry Harford were found guilty in December last year of defrauding the board $16.9 million. The fraud happened over a period of six years. (NZ Herald 17 February 2009)

Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).