Alex Swney sentencing postponed

Former Heart of the City chief executive Alex Swney was due to be sentenced this afternoon. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Auckland businessman Alex Swney will have to wait to find out how long he will spend in jail.

The 57-year-old former Heart of the City boss was due to be sentenced in Auckland District Court this afternoon after pleading guilty to charges laid by the Inland Revenue and Serious Fraud Office totaling fraud of more than $4 million.

But this morning the court confirmed the sentencing judge was sick and a new date would have to be arranged to hear the matter.

The former mayoral candidate has been on bail since charges were laid last year but he has accepted he will eventually have to swap his swanky Ponsonby property for a jail cell.

The most recent offences, which Swney admitted last week, involved dishonestly using false invoices to obtain $2,527,005 from the organisation between February 2004 and October 2014.

In January, he pleaded guilty to four representative charges covering 12 years of offending and $1,757,147 of unpaid taxes.

Heart of the City - a city-centre business association registered by Swney in 1994 - has income-tax exemption on the basis that it was created to develop or increase amenities for the Auckland public.

But technically the defendant was a contractor of the organisation as the sole director of AGS Services Limited and the services he provided were taxable.

A summary of facts filed by the IRD showed how Swney issued "various fictitious invoices" to Heart of the City, from which he benefited.

Investigators questioned several organisations - including the New Zealand Herald - over the authenticity of the invoices and determined they were created "without authorisation".

Swney is also on the end of a civil action launched by Heart of the City, whose board announced the move in December after forensic accountants scoured their finances.