New Zealand Budget in Disarray as Treasury Systems Hacked

New Zealand’s annual budget has been thrown into disarray after the opposition National Party released parts of it early and the Treasury Department said its computer systems had been hacked, according to Bloomberg.

Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf has called in police after finding evidence of more than 2,000 attempts to access secret budget documents on its computer systems since Sunday night, he told Radio New Zealand. While the information obtained appeared to match some of the material released by opposition leader Simon Bridges, Makhlouf refused to directly link the National Party to the hack.

So far no information that might be market-sensitive, such as budget surplus or net debt projections, has been released. Bridges has meanwhile denied his party hacked Treasury, saying it acted “entirely appropriately“ in obtaining the information prior to its official publication.