📸

the scandal began to drag National Party MPs into its grasp.

It also emerged during the course of a month's-long revelations that Banks also sought a donation for the Act Party — he recalled being told “to go get f****d as your Government has caused me too much trouble” — the timing would place it just after the mansion rejection.

The scandal rolled on when it was learnt Banks had contacted Dotcom — through Tempero — after the election. This time he sought a hotel recommendation for Hong Kong and, according to an email from Tempero, “would like to sit down with you in the new year to talk about how he can be a service to [you] and the family now [he] is back as an MP”. Dotcom arranged a booking at the Grand Hyatt, the hotel where he had rented the top floor for the past seven years. Banks was given an upgrade on arrival and then negotiated the room rate down to half the listed price. He also received a $1000 gift basket with a note in Dotcom's handwriting: “Hi John, welcome to my town ;-) I wish you and your wife an amazing Christmas and the best New Year ever. Your friend, Kim.” While Banks gave away the contents of the basket, the failure to declare it again put him foul of rules governing politicians' behaviour.

The scandal had two layers — there was an easily consumable element which contrasted Banks's inability to remember the extraordinary against documents, video footage and witnesses who could. The layer beneath, the details of the funding and the apparent manipulation of the electoral finance laws, was more obscure yet had greater potential to damage Banks. Dotcom transcended any barriers between the story and the wider population with a song, voiced by Printz Board, which parodied Banks.

“Nothing to fear / Nothing to hide
He's the majority / So he's all right.
He is John Banks / He got the vote
And that's why Key keeps him afloat /
On his cabbage boat.”

In a conversation at the time, Dotcom said the Banks affair had brought some brightness into a time of great darkness in which his business was destroyed and his life changed forever. It seemed a commentary on his ability to control something — anything — when so much was out of control. Dotcom said later the song lifted the gloom. “The brightness was making the song. That was really cool. We had fun doing that. It took my mind off all this crap.” It was, Dotcom said, “definitely something that freed up a blockage in my head”.

The police investigation saw detectives back at the mansion. This

📸