Napier, MSCNewsWire, Friday 1 July 2016 - In a bizarre outcome of Brexit a huge British company appears to be writing to New Zealanders in order to acquire donations.

Katharine Viner (above) the editor in chief of the Guardian News and Media group, or someone purporting to be her, has sent emails to New Zealanders seeking “a monthly contribution” along with “a one-off payment.”  Miss Viner or the person claiming to be her says that the donations are required so that the company “can continue interrogating (sic) exactly what has happened, and why, and what needs to happen next.”

The group, which also owns the British Sunday newspaper The Observer in recent years cleared over NZ$1 billion when it sold out of its motor vehicle trading media interests.

GMG, as the diversified industrial organisation is known, only several years ago sold its immensely profitable Manchester Evening News.

Herein lies the problem for charitably-inclined New Zealanders if in fact the appeal is genuine. There will be problems now claiming their donations as being tax deductible.  This is because following the sale in 2008 of the Manchester Evening News, the organisation had to jettison the charitable status it had enjoyed for so long under the structure of the Scott Trust.

This will be on the minds of donors as they seek to support Miss Viner, or the individual claiming to be her, in what is described as the organisation’s requirement “to work 24 hours a day, seven days, across the world, to provide the answers.....”

There remains the possibility of the widely distributed email being a clever scam. Clever because it subtly leans into the pro bono high-minded formula of The Guardian, and replicates elements of the pol-sci jargon used to express it.

If it is a forgery then New Zealanders will be particularly vulnerable to it following the long-running and authentic campaign for donations by the pioneering Scoop site which hews to The Guardian editorial formula and which has also had problems attracting big-ticket advertisers.Meanwhile, and many hours after the circulation of the purported appeal for funds, there was no warning on The Guardian’s news site that the company had been the target of a scam.

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