The multi-million dollar fraud trial of former Otago District Health Board IT manager Michael Swann and friend and business associate Kerry Harford continued in Dunedin today with a video link to Melbourne for evidence from Professor Bill Adam, a former board CEO.
During the half-hour link, Professor Adam told Justice Stevens and a High Court jury that, as CEO between December 1998 and February 2003, he was aware of contracted work provided to the board's IT services.
But he said he did not recall anyone at Healthcare Otago ever making him aware of a company called Sonnford Solutions Ltd.
He understand certain contracts had been unearthed, dated within his time as CEO, recording a contractual relationship between Healthcare Otago (and ODHB) and Sonnford Solutions Ltd for service and maintenance for the hospital's three servers.
Had those maintenance and service contracts been of significant size, as he had been told they were, he would have expected them to have been drawn to his attention in the course of the approval process required by the board, Prof Adam said.
He would also have expected the contracts to have been recorded on the board's Contracts Register.
But he had never been made aware of Sonnford Solutions and neither could he remember a company called Computer South Ltd.
The Crown says Sonnford Solutions Ltd was a Harford-owned company which billed the health board almost $16.9 million between August 2000 and August 2006 for computer related services which were never provided.
According to the Crown, the money went to Harford (10%) and Swann (90%) or to structures Swann controlled, one of them being Computer South Ltd.
Swann (46) and Harford (48) both deny three charges of dishonest and fraudulent document use.
