Raymond Andrews is permanently banned by High Court order. Photo / Peter Meecham
Raymond Andrews is permanently banned by High Court order. Photo / Peter Meecham
Serial fraudster Raymond Anthony Andrews has been permanently banned from being a company director, promoter or taking part in the management of any companies.
Justice Anne Hinton in the High Court at Auckland issued her decision on Friday, granting the Registrar of Companies’ application to ban him withoutthe court approving any activities.
That decision has today been released.
The registrar made the application based on Andrews being an undischarged bankrupt and his record of offending.
He “is a persistent offender, having been convicted of offences relating to the management of companies and also dishonesty offending. The registrar says that a permanent term of disqualification is justified and necessary to protect the public from Mr Andrews engaging in similar conduct in the future,” the decision said.
In August, Andrews indicated he would oppose the application but took no steps to do so until the hearing when he filed a brief submission with supporting documents, Judge Hinton said.
He also appeared in person and filed a memo. Grounds for opposing the application included that he shouldn’t have been declared bankrupt in 2008 because it was the fault of his then-lawyer who gave him bad advice.
Andrews also said he had applied to be released from bankruptcy and the Official Assignee indicated they wouldn’t oppose that. He also said his bankruptcy contained all the safeguards needed to protect the public and he had no intention of returning to because because he had been reformed.
He is a fulltime law student at AUT and hopes to be admitted to the bar, he said.
Evidence supporting the registrar’s application to the court to have him permanently barred was presented by Gregory Mark Bruce, a senior investigator with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s enforcement team in the market services group.
On the bankruptcy, the court heard creditor claims totalled $684,000 and he had made no contribution towards satisfying those.
He was also convicted of “a very large number of charges of tax evasion for which he received fines of $200 in each instance. That related to offending from 2002 to 2007″.
In February 2013, after a jury trial, he was found guilty of seven charges of operating a business without Official Assignee approval; two charges of obtaining credit illegally and two charges of concealing property from the Official Assignee. That same year, the Bay of Plenty Times reported how a judge branded the Tauranga man “a serial liar” and jailed him for 15 months.
In his sentencing after conviction, another judge referred to him as having “breathtaking arrogance” and not cooperating with the Official Assignee.
Raymond Andrews when he appeared in the dock for sentencing at the Auckland District Court in 2019. Photo / Peter Meecham.
Andrews had carried out a series of business activities relating in particular to laser hair removal and funded by his son Robert in Australia.
Before those activities, he had been refused permission by the Official Assignee to be employed by Robert.
In 2017, following the entry of guilty pleas, Andrews was convicted of one representative charge of operating a business while bankrupt. The offending concerned his management of Max Imports while he was an undischarged bankrupt.
Friday’s decision also referred to 2019 convictions related to offending from February 2014 to August 2017, some of this being while he was on bail for 2017 convictions.
Offending primarily related to his involvement with a variety of trading entities, importing and distributing cars from Australia with his son Robert and Robert’s business Maxium Pty.
This offending involved losses somewhere in the vicinity of $500,000 and approximately $775,000 was concealed from the Official Assignee, Judge Hinton said.
He was sentenced to six years and six months’ imprisonment, that noted, with Judge Mary Beth Sharp who sentenced him then saying: “Your personality, your manner of dealing with things, the way that you have misled people puts you in a category of someone who completely lacks accountability.
“You are someone who the public needs to be protected from. Your ability to persuade people and to make seemingly reasonable statements from a position where no such statements could possibly be made marks you out as a person who has significant negative characteristics unsupported by any sense of personal responsibility.”
Judge Hinton therefore granted the registrar’s application, concluding: “Raymond Anthony Andrews is prohibited, without leave of the court, from being a director or promoter of, or in any way, whether directly or indirectly, being concerned or taking part in the management of a company.”
After the ruling was released, the ministry’s manager of the integrity and enforcement team, Vanessa Cook, said the bankruptcy process was designed and intended to allow people to recover from financial disaster and move on with their lives, a process which the vast majority of bankrupts in New Zealand participated honestly in.
“Andrews chose to break the law on numerous occasions after becoming bankrupt, causing significant and extensive financial damage to his victims and has given no indication that his behaviour is likely to change in the future. Permanent disqualification is only sought in the most serious of cases, however, given the escalating nature of Mr Andrew’s offending, the Registrar judged it necessary to act in order to protect the public from further harm,” Cook said today.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
