Every figure on this site is the Crown’s, not ours.
We make no claim you can’t verify in a published New Zealand government document. Below are the four primary sources — each linked to the official agency page and to a copy you can download here.
Four documents underpin the entire argument.
Fraud Loss in the New Zealand Public Sector
UK Government Counter Fraud Function, with the NZ Serious Fraud Office Counter Fraud Centre, December 2021.
Fifth National Action Plan (NAP5) 2026–2027
Open Government Partnership New Zealand. Public Service Commission (Te Kawa Mataaho), December 2025. Minister for the Public Service, Hon Judith Collins KC.
Assessing fraud and corruption risks in the NZ public sector
Pilot report of the Anti-Corruption Taskforce. Serious Fraud Office (Te Tari Hara Tāware), NZ Police & Public Service Commission, February 2026. ISBN 978-0-473-77014-3. Crown copyright, CC BY 4.0 NZ.
Conflict-of-interest guidance for the public sector
Controller and Auditor-General (Tumuaki o te Mana Arotake), now the Audit Office — the Office of the Auditor-General and Audit New Zealand merged under this brand in April 2026. Published June 2020 under s21 of the Public Audit Act 2001. ISBN 978-0-9951321-5-3. The public sector’s good-practice standard for identifying, disclosing and managing conflicts of interest.
Where each number comes from.
| $823m–$10.24b lost to fraud, corruption & error each year | UK 0.45–5.6% benchmark applied to Budget 2025 expenditure. Source 3 (p4); benchmark from Source 1. |
|---|---|
| ~40% of the SFO’s caseload involves corruption | Source 3 (p4). |
| 446 incidents across 6 agencies in 15 months; sector-wide “could number in the thousands” | Source 3 (p8, p16). |
| Cases “almost certainly under-reported”; true scale “unknown” | Source 3 (exec summary, p4, p8). |
| “Fraud is a hidden crime… we only detect the tip of the iceberg” | Source 1 (p4, p8). |
| CPI ranking slipped from first-equal (2019) to fourth (2024) — first time outside the top three | Source 3 (p4); Source 2 (p3). |
| “It only takes a small number of corrupt individuals to taint the reputation of the rest of the sector” | Source 3 (p4). |
| “Protecting a strong reputation rather than trying to buy back a ruined one” | Source 3 (p4, p12). |
| Conflicts of interest are the “gateway to corruption” (Audit NZ / PSC) | Source 3 (p10). |
| NAP5 Commitment 2 — “Develop a corruption risk assessment tool” (SFO) | Source 2 (p7, p16). |
| NAP5 Commitment 4 — transparency of senior leaders’ conflicts; “no publication of declared interests or management plans” | Source 2 (p4, p7). |
| “No strategic, system-wide approach”; sector “on the back foot… leveraging data analytics” | Source 3 (p4, p7). |
| Two agencies: no/partial controls for 64–70% of criteria (incl. gifts monitoring, supplier due diligence) | Source 3 (p8). |
| 2012: 78% expected fraud reported but only 39% was; 53% regularly reviewed controls | Source 1 (p6). |
| 300% rise in protected-disclosure matters since the 2022 Whistleblowers Act (to June 2025) | Source 2 (p10). |
| “Reporting by employees is the single most important method by which corrupt activity is brought to light” | Source 2 (p8). |
| Proposed Public Service Act 2020 amendments — mandatory misconduct reporting | Source 3 (p10). |
| Definition: a conflict is any situation where your public duties conflict, or could be seen to conflict, with an outside interest | Source 4 (p7, 2.1). |
| The good-practice approach is to identify, disclose, and manage conflicts | Source 4 (1.2). |
| Auditors examine the systems for managing conflicts of interest, and monitor disclosures, as part of the annual audit (Public Audit Act 2001, s15) | Source 4 (1.9–1.10). |
| “Having a conflict of interest does not necessarily mean you have done anything wrong” — concealment or poor management is the problem; perception matters | Source 4 (overview; 2.3). |
Source documents are published by the named New Zealand government agencies and are reproduced here for convenience under their open licences (Source 3: CC BY 4.0 NZ). Their inclusion does not imply any endorsement of Conflict IQ by those agencies. Agency names are used for attribution only.
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