ONE News has an email trail linking the suspended Foreign Minister with an Honorary Consul role for Owen Glenn in Monaco, the European playground for the rich and famous.
Glenn donated $100,000 to Winston Peters' legal bills in December 2005.
The transport tycoon had a lot to give but there was one thing he wanted in return - a position as New Zealand's Honorary Consul to Monaco. So he approached Foreign Minister Peters.
The New Zealand First leader has previously claimed a hands-off approach to the appointment.
"We run things under a process here. The minister doesn't get in before the process has even started and give his view. What sort of ministry do you think I am running?" Peters said in a press conference earlier in the year.
But papers obtained by ONE News show Peters had aggressively pushed the case for Glenn.
Foreign Affairs chief executive Simon Murdoch wrote to Peters' senior officials in April 2007 saying Peters had requested to appoint an expat of his choice as the honorary consul in Monaco.
The next day one of Peters' senior advisors clarified that the name Peters put forward is Glenn's.
By the end of August last year Peters was frustrated with the lack of progress.
He was pushing for New Zealand's ambassador in France to meet Glenn over the posting, according to an email from the deputy secretary of Foreign Affairs.
Peters was defensive when Parliament's Privileges Committee questioned him over his involvement in the posting.
"It's the secretary of foreign affairs in tandem with the Governor General who makes such appointments - that is where it rests," Peters had said.
Meanwhile Glenn believed he was on track to get the posting. One of his assistants wrote him a note which described a successful meeting with regards to the Monaco appointment.
But while Peters was pushing the case, his officials were questioning whether Glenn was the man for the job and whether the job was needed at all.
A report prepared in November concluded that the position was marginal and if it did go ahead they recommended another candidate named Franco Repetto, saying he lived in Monaco full time while Glenn was there just three months a year.
