Former South Canterbury Finance (SCF) director Edward Sullivan will hear his fate at the High Court today after being found guilty on charges relating to the company's collapse.
The 72-year-old was convicted on five charges in October after a lengthy and complicated fraud trial involving five months of hearings, 61 days of evidence and 40 witnesses.
Sullivan, a lawyer, will be the only person held accountable over the catastrophic downfall of SCF four years ago in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.
The collapse, which prompted a $1.7 billion government payout, sparked accusations of major fraud and a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation which eventually put five people before the courts.
But the case soon turned into a disaster for prosecutors who dropped charges against two of the men and later lost their case against former chief executive Lachie McLeod and former director Robert White.
McLeod, 50, and White, 70, were acquitted on all charges including theft by a person in special relationship, obtaining by deception and false accounting.
Sullivan was found guilty of four charges of making a false statement in a company prospectus and one charge of misusing a document to derive a pecuniary advantage.
Justice Paul Heath acquitted the man on four other counts and ordered a pre-sentence report to consider his eligibility for home detention.
In October, the High Court judge delivered a scathing critique of the prosecution and pointed to a number of problems with their case.
He found former chairman Allan Hubbard, who died in a car crash three years ago, was directly responsible for the company's financial woes and eventual collapse.
Justice Heath did not find evidence of the "culture of concealment" the Crown had alleged and instead pointed to bad practices and a failure to adapt the business as possible contributors to failure.
However, he also slammed the SFO for "deficiencies in the investigation" and said there may have been documents which showed transactions were being concealed but these were not uncovered.
3 News
source: newshub archive
