The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment could not confirm the completeness of $422.5 million in immigration revenue after Audit New Zealand identified unexplained variances in its financial records.
A reconciliation exercise requested by auditors revealed a $2.5 million unexplained difference in non-departmental Crown revenue for the 2023/24 year, a variance of 1.6%. Departmental revenue showed a further $1.1 million unexplained difference, a variance of 0.4%.
The discrepancy forced auditors to revisit their audit approach and required additional work to meet the statutory deadline. Immigration Minister Erica Stanford was briefed on the findings through a no-surprises briefing.
Audit New Zealand directed MBIE to ensure its systems were sufficiently robust to address the risk of material misstatement and recommended a review of immigration revenue processes, systems and controls. The ministry had several immigration systems producing reports that were difficult to match to its financial records or annual report.
MBIE chief financial officer Sharyn Mitchell said auditors requesting more supporting documentation was not unusual. She noted the ministry's earlier reconciliation approach used extracted data for broad verification rather than detailed analysis, serving as a general sense check.
MBIE introduced quarterly reconciliations from 2025 across all its systems, the general ledger and the Immigration New Zealand bank account. The revised process produced a combined variance of $0.2 million in 2025, or 0.03%. Mitchell attributed remaining differences to factors including foreign exchange rate changes between transaction and reconciliation dates.