Foreign Minister Winston Peters is barely back in the country and is already delivering a tongue-lashing over suggestions secret money and an expat billionaire have been bankrolling his party.
The New Zealand First leader has arrived back from Africa and Korea, attacking journalists questioning him over the Owen Glenn affair.
Peters was asked about a secret $100,000 donation to New Zealand First and the possibility of him appointing the billionaire businessman as an honorary consul in Monaco.
Peters turned on the two journalists who greeted him and when asked whether he had considered the appointment of Glenn during his foreign travels, Peters asked the journalists whether they were short of intelligence.
But ONE News did get a straight answer out of Peters when he was asked whether he ever received any money from Owen Glenn or any associate of Glenn.
"N O to every one of the allegations you have made," Peters replied.
There was speculation Glenn gave money to NZ First because the transport tycoon refused to deny it and because the party president referred to an anonymous donation in the party's funding return.
"It will be anonymous so I don't know where it came from - that's the meaning of anonymous isn't it...we've got to work it out roughly...it's a five figure sum," party president Dail Jones said, adding that the bank had been unable to tell him where the money had come from.
Peters says Jones could have got confused over the documentation and it may have been better to have spoken to the Treasurer.
Jones said the anonymous donation was part of the money New Zealand First raised to pay back its over-spending on advertising at the 2005 election.
When asked where the money come from, Peters said: "It is not your mischievous business."
