A report released today urged MSD and other departments to prosecute companies it believed had wrongly accessed the scheme. The Auditor-General, John Ryan, said he did not believe MSD had determined the scale of the problem. "After payment, MSD's reviews mainly consisted of a verbal confirmation of information by employers," Ryan wrote. "Although the Ministry of Social Development has publicly described these reviews as audits, in my view they are not audits. "In our view, public organisations involved in administering the scheme worked well together under challenging circumstances and time frames.

Source: New Zealand Herald May 11, 2021 02:56 UTC