The SPCS contends that some of the more spectacular symptoms that reveal how New Zealand society has lost its moral bearings, include the steady growth in its million dollar white collar crime ‘industry’, involving fraud, bribery, theft, and dishonesty etc. Hitting the headlines with growing regularity it seems, are middle-aged grey-haired balding, or completely bald company directors, who, having been banned by the Registrar of Companies under section 385 of the Companies Act 1993 from directing, managing or promoting a company for up to five years; are subsequenly convicted and sentenced for committing multiple breaches of such banning orders, at the same time having committed serial criminal offences involving fraud etc.
Some having been banned because they pose a serious financial risk to the public because of their mismanagement of company financial matters and/or financial incompetence, despite having a degree or two such as an MBA, deliberately give the ‘the two-fingered salute’ to the Registrar of Companies who imposed the ban on them; caring little about any moral standards, the rule of law or the vulnerability of the public to their financial risk-taking and gross incompetence. Others banned from being directors after being declared bankrupts in the Courts, give the same insulting salute and box on as trumped up ‘directors’, in the self-declared role of “promoter” and/or highly paid “consultant”.
Such flagrant deception when exposed by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) makes a complete mockery of the sanctions (prohibitions) imposed on such former directors by the Companies Office via the Courts, unless such crimes are severely punished by Judges at sentencing. The SPCS contends that banned company directors who deliberately and knowlingly breach banning orders should be jailed long-term and made to make full reparation. It believes that the vast majority of New Zealanders would probably support this view.
It is reassuring to the public to read in he Dominion Post report of 3 December 2010 that… On 3 December “in Wellington District Court, bankrupt Alan Edwards Wycherley, 52, who had been using the name of clients of a debt management company to get money from an Auckland finance firm, was jailed for three years. He had pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud, nine charges of running a company while prohibited and two of illegally signing shareholder forms.”
He was one of “two Waikanae men who appeared before the courts the same morning, in unrelated million-dollar fraud cases, in which one falsely claimed a client was terminally ill and the other submitted dodgy loan applications.” Both were sentenced by Judge Behrens.
See full report: 3 December 2010 http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wellington/4418021/Two-guilty-of-million-dollar-fraud