Computer South Ltd is well overdue in its obligation to file its 2010 Annual Return that was due in April 2010. The Companies Office website (www.companies.govt.nz) carries a warning to the company stating:
“This company is now overdue in its obligation to file an annual return. If the annual return is not filed immediately the Registrar will initiate action to remove the company from the register.”
The Companies Office website document records show that it is directed by a Mr Peter Bruce Ibbotson, a plumber and long-term friend of convicted fraudster Michael Andrew Swann, who was appointed in 1997. All the Annual Returns for the company from 2003 to 2009 were filed on line by female employees of Checketts McKay (Wanaka). The 2001 and 2002 returns were filed by “Solicitors, Checketts McKay (Wanaka)”. One of its principals Iain Grant Fyfe held 33% of the company’s shares from March 1997 to 14 September 2006 and then 50% until 22 September 2006 when they were all transferred to Ibbotson.
The bank account of Computer South Ltd was where much of the $15.2 million Michael Swann defrauded from the Otago District Health Board, was deposited from 2000 to 2006. Swann, sentenced to nine and a half years jail in March 2009 for his part in defrauding the ODHB of a total of $16.9 million. While he carried out the fraud he also deposited an additional $755,153 of kick-back payments sourceed ultimately from the ODHB into the same account and was convicted and sentenced for this additional crime (accepting bribes).
Swann remained in full controll of Computer South finances from 2000 to 2006, spending most of it on properties. With the aid of a Computer South shareholder, Iain Grant Fyfe, of Checketts McKay (Wanaka), who acted as his solicitor, they established trusts that became the owners of the “tainted properties” as a High Court judge has called them.
Fyfe of Checketts McKay Law still remains the solicitor for Computer South and has been in that role since the company – which was used as nothing more than a de facto bank account by Swann – was incorporated in March 1997.
Fyfe was a party to the signing of the company’s constitution along with its present sole ‘director’ Peter Ibbotson and Swann’s now estranged wife Anna Laura Devereux.
Ibbotson has recorded the same residential address – 71 Church Street, Warrington, on the Annual Returns of Computer South from 1997 to 2009 and on his Director’s Certificate of Consent. Devereux recorded this same address on Annual Returns from 1999 until 2006.
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