Otago District Health Board's IT chief Michael Swann's business acumen was abysmal but that was not proof he was a criminal, the High Court at Dunedin was told yesterday.
Swann, 47, and Kerry Harford, 48, a Queenstown surveyor, both denied three charges each of dishonestly and with intentdefrauding the board.
They allegedly used 198 invoices in the name of Sonnford Solutions, a company set up by Harford, to obtain $16.9 million from the board between August 2000 and August 2006, the Otago Daily Times reported.
The prosecution said that Swann received just over $15m in six years, while the board was paying him an annual salary of $145,000 in his role as head of IT.
The remaining $1.8m went to Harford.
All Swann told the truth about during two days in the witness box was his name, his boats and his cars, Crown counsel Robin Bates said in his summing up at the completion of evidence.
Contracts and invoices clearly showed the two men acted fraudulently and could not claim they believed they were entitled to do what they did, he said.
None of the invoices, said to be for risk mitigation insurance, mentioned any such arrangement.
They were for firmware and software upgrades and licences.
But Swann's lawyer, John Haigh QC, said his client's abysmal business acumen did not make him a criminal.
For Harford, Greg King asked why, if the arrangement where Sonnford invoiced the board for computer-related services and passed 90 per cent to the Swann-controlled company Computer South was a sham, would Harford take only a 10 per cent.
It was "absurd" that a person would embark on a dishonest course of conduct to defraud $17 million and take only 10 per cent he said.
Justice Lyn Stevens will now sum up today before the jury retires to consider its verdicts.
