The mysterious unravelling of Bryce Edwards’ high-profile transparency project
Thursday, 9 October 2025
In a sudden and unexplained move, the Integrity Institute – an organisation that billed itself as a watchdog for transparency and accountability – has been removed from the Charitable Trusts Register.
Its once-public Lobbying and Influence Register, a database mapping political donations and elite connections, also appears to have vanished from its website, leaving only fragments visible via director Bryce Edwards’ Substack.
The Post understands the Institute’s senior researcher also recently left, after just eight months in the role.
While the Institute itself is independent, it shares a history with Victoria University research projects that were funded by close to $1 million in philanthropic support from the Gama Foundation, run by wealthy Christchurch couple Grant and Marilyn Nelson.
The projects were intended to improve political integrity and transparency in New Zealand.
The Institute grew out of Edwards’ Democracy Project, which ran in parallel with Victoria University’s Political Integrity Index NZ (PIINZ), a separate research project led by Karin Lasthuizen that Edwards assisted.
Both projects have experienced delays, with work now more than two years behind schedule.
The Institute was removed from the charitable trusts register on September 29, less than a year after it was incorporated.
A charitable trust holds assets for charitable purposes, such as education, religion, poverty relief, or community benefit.
The Nelsons were the trustees and the trust deed revealed it was set up to “facilitate research and public education on the importance of good, transparent and accountable public decision-making…[and] carry out research on how to achieve affordable and accessible access to civil justice.”
Grant Nelson declined to comment when contacted by The Post this week.
A spokesperson for the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment, which operates the register, confirmed: “The Integrity Institute was removed from the Charitable Trusts register after an application was received from its trustees.
“The trustees advised that The Integrity Institute was no longer carrying on its operations and voluntarily sought its removal.”
The register of lobbyists also appears to have vanished from the Institute’s website.
(The removal was clumsy: the page now displays miniscule text and is only readable in ‘Reading Mode’ accessible via Edward’s Substack.)
Left-wing pundit Edwards said in a statement that he was aware the organisation had been removed from the Charitable Trusts Register, but stressed this was “a question for the trustees.”
“When I joined the Institute as director, it was as an employee, with the board holding ultimate responsibility for the organisation,” he said. “It would not be appropriate for me to pre-empt the board.”
Edwards declined to elaborate further, saying only that he continued to support “the kind of work the Institute was established to do.”
Slow progress and legal reviews
In 2021, the Gama Foundation provided $820,000 to Victoria University of Wellington for two research projects aimed at strengthening political integrity in New Zealand.
The Political Integrity Index NZ (PIINZ), led by Karin Lasthuizen and assisted by Edwards, was designed to benchmark New Zealand’s standards of political integrity against international measures.
They received $333,000 to “research allegations of integrity violations by politicians.” That would include an annual Political Integrity Index.
The second, the Democracy Project: Vested Interests, led by Bryce Edwards, promised to map lobbying activity, political donations and networks of elite influence through a new Web of Influence database. The grant totalled $487,000.
From the outset, however, both projects encountered difficulties.
By March 2023, the first six-monthly reports to the Gama Foundation showed progress well behind schedule, according to documents seen by The Post.
PIINZ was still refining its methodology and data framework. The Democracy Project’s database of donations and lobbying links remained in its early stages.
Staffing problems quickly compounded the delays. One of PIINZ’s PhD students went on extended leave, reducing research capacity, while Edwards’ Democracy Project was operating largely as a two-person effort – Edwards and his research assistant –after other early assistants departed.
In mid-2023, one of the PIINZ doctoral candidates withdrew permanently, forcing the University to reallocate scholarship funds and revise its budget.
In July of that year, Edwards told The Post that the main research outputs – including the book – would be delivered at the end of 2024. A ‘Web of Influence’ public database would be published in October 2023.
He said the Political Integrity Index would launch at the 2023 general election, and ‘vested interest’ public campaigns were being developed.
By that point, Edwards’ completed research was listed as mostly opinion columns. The articles were largely commentary based on media reporting of political news stories.
But the proposed book, originally conceived as a scholarly publication, later stalled. Journalist Denis Welch was later brought in to help reshape it into a more accessible, public-facing narrative. It remains unpublished.
“Do something bigger”
Documents released this week to The Post under the Official Information Act show that by late 2023, the University had initiated a legal review of PIINZ outputs “to guard against defamation and reputational risk.”
The documents also reveal that by early 2025, Edwards’ work was no longer fully contained within the university.
The internal correspondence reveals the research fellow had been holding discussions directly with Grant Nelson “not in his capacity as a representative of the University.”
In a February 2025 interview with The Platform, Edwards revealed that he was “setting up the Integrity Institute,” describing it as “ a new advocacy and think-tank” that would replace the Democracy Project.
He said the Nelsons had encouraged him to “go on and do something bigger” focused on exposing vested interests in politics.
Those off-campus conversations coincided with mounting frustration inside the Foundation over the stalled Political Integrity Index.
In June 2025, Nelson emailed the University complaining that “around $300,000 had already been spent” on the project and warning that keeping it locked in legal review “would defeat the whole purpose of the funding.”
He added: “I decided to ask [Bryce] about it. He said that he had not been involved for a while so would talk to Karin and get back to me. I have not heard anything further at this stage.”
(In his statement to The Post on Wednesday, Edwards said of the Political Integrity Index: “I really have nothing to do with this…I continue to work on my own book at the University, in conjunction with researcher Denis Welch, on wealthy vested interests in New Zealand politics, to be published next year.”)
University officials acknowledged internally that “the funder is increasingly frustrated,” but insisted publication could not proceed until defamation and reputational risks were resolved.
In the same month, The Integrity Institute was formally launched with Edwards as its director, and much of the Democracy Project’s material, including the Lobbying and Influence Register, migrated under the Institute’s banner.
(The Institute had been active long before that. In 2023, following legal action from the Nelsons, it ran an advertising campaign claiming the Ministry of Social Development had overpaid $10 billion in wage-subsidy funds – a claim that the Ministry strongly rebutted as “based on a misunderstanding of the eligibility criteria.” The Advertising Standards Authority later received a complaint from the Ministry describing the campaign as misleading.)
Almost as soon as the lobbying register went live, the project began facing complaints about accuracy.
The legal pressure the university had tried to avoid now arrived at the Institute’s door. Taxpayers’ Union boss Jordan Williams threatened legal action and Holly Bennett, founder of government-relations firm Awhi pointed to inaccuracies.
Then in July, it emerged the organisation had given an unspecificed grant to Newsroom to investigate lobbying in a year-long project called Who Benefits.
Its first target was agriculture, leading Federated Farmers to claim it was “pay-for-play journalism and dirty politics.”
In a statement, deputy vice-chancellor Margaret Hyland, said the university “does not have a relationship with the Integrity Institute.”
Earlier, in a letter accompanying the release of documents, the university said: “data collection and entry for the Web of Influence is largely complete and is intended for release by the end of 2025. Some aspects of this are being launched incrementally in the interim, including the Lobbying and Influence Register [on the Integrity Institute’s Substack].”
It also said the Intergrity Index and Welch’s book were scheduled for publication next year.
Hyland said: “The timeline delays were driven by the university wide changes needed to ensure the institution’s financial sustainability.
“This was a time of considerable change and uncertainty which resulted in delays in recruitment, and many other points of decision, across the university. Unfortunately, this also resulted in a significant timing impact for the Democracy Project.”
She said systems were in place to ensure oversight and regular reporting of funded research. “Both PIINZ and the Democracy Project were subject to these processes.”
The Post asked if the blog and Substack posts, and LinkedIn commentary listed as research outputs, were valid scholarly outputs for a research grant of this size.
“A key contractual requirement of this funding was the production of a communications plan to ensure the impact of work was delivered to a wider audience, as you have seen in the referenced research communication outputs,” Hyland said. “The University is comfortable with the quality of the research undertaken and confident that outputs for PIINZ and the Democracy Project will be delivered.”
Many of the questions asked by The Post were not answered. The university said: “please feel free to submit any further follow up questions through our OIA process” - a process that usually takes a minimum of 20 working days.