Mr Peters voluntarily stepped aside from his post last Friday while the country's Serious Fraud Office investigates the finances of his New Zealand First Party.

Parliament is also looking into whether Peters failed to declare a private 100,000 New Zealand dollar (S$97,500) donation from a billionaire, and his party is facing investigation by the nation's Electoral Commission.

On Thursday, lawmaker Rodney Hide said he had made a formal complaint to police that Mr Peters' party had breached electoral law 'by filing a (political) donations return for the 2007 year that is false.'

Hide is leader of the right-wing ACT Party, which has two members of Parliament and is an opponent of Prime Minister Helen Clark's government.

Earlier Thursday, New Zealand First Party trustee Grant Currie confirmed that the party's Spencer Trust funding group had channeled donations totaling more than 10,000 New Zealand dollars to the party in both 2006 and 2007.

The party reported 'nil' returns for those years, which Mr Currie acknowledged appeared to put the party in breach of the law.

Under New Zealand law, political parties must declare gifts of more than NZ$10,000 to an official register in the year they are made.

Donation filing breaches carry a sentence of one year in prison, a NZ$20,000 fine, or both, for knowingly breaching the Electoral Finance Act.

In a separate development on Thursday, billionaire Owen Glenn again told Parliament's powerful Privileges Committee that Peters had called him in late 2005 seeking financial assistance for his electoral petition after he lost his parliamentary seat in the 2005 election.

'There is absolutely no doubt that the request came to me from Mr. Peters,' Mr Glenn wrote in a letter from his home in Monaco.

This directly contradicts Mr Peters' claims that his lawyer had made the contact and that he was unaware of Mr Glenn's NZ$100,000 donation until told of it in July 2008.

The committee is checking whether Mr Peters broke parliamentary rules by failing to declare Mr Glenn's donation. Mr Glenn is due to appear before the committee next week.

There was no immediate comment from Mr Peters on Thursday, but he earlier denied any wrongdoing and pledged to fully cooperate with any investigation.

Mr Peters' New Zealand First Party is a key support party for Clark's Labour-led coalition government. Elections are due in New Zealand by mid-November. -- AP