03-055 Former Comestock officer jailed
Friday 14 February 2003
Mr Harunobu Fukusato, a former manager of Comestock Corporation (Australia) Pty Ltd (in liquidation), was sentenced today in the Brisbane District Court on five charges laid by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
Judge Healy QC sentenced Mr Fukusato to four years imprisonment on one count of failing to act honestly as an officer of Comestock Corporation with intent to deceive a creditor. He ordered the sentence to be suspended after 12 months upon Mr Fukusato providing a recognisance of $500 on the condition that he is of good behaviour for four years.
He also sentenced Mr Fukusato to 18 months imprisonment on each of two counts of enabling or aiding the commission of forgery offences by Hiromi Kawada, the Australian-based manager of Comestock Corporation, one count of forgery and one count of uttering a forged document. These sentences were made concurrent to the first sentence and will be suspended after six months on the condition Mr Fukusato not commit another offence within five years.
Background
Comestock Corporation was a real-estate investment company based in Queensland. Mr Eikichi Yazawa, a high-profile Japanese entertainer, was a director and major shareholder of Comestock Corporation.
The Court heard that between 1987 and 1990 Mr Yazawa invested AUS$27 million in residential, commercial, industrial and tourism assets on the Gold Coast and Port Douglas, Queensland including a large residential unit development on the Gold Coast known as ‘Rhode Island’.
Mr Fukusato and a co-accused Mr Hiromi (Henry) Kawada were employed by Mr Yazawa’s companies to manage and administer those assets. Mr Kawada, with assistance from Mr Fukusato, fraudulently entered into agreements with the financiers to the Rhode Island project, which ultimately collapsed.
Mr Kawada has already pleaded guilty to charges relating to these agreements and will be sentenced on 3 March 2003.
The fraudulent activity of Messrs Fukusato and Kawada resulted in Mr Yazawa and his companies losing his entire Australian property portfolio.
Mr Fukusato then aided Mr Kawada in the concealment of the losses during the period from 1994 to 1998, by failing to advise Mr Yazawa that Comestock Australia had been wound up in early 1995 and deregistered in 1996.
The prosecution presented to the Court, samples of the many thousands of documents that were forged between 1994 and 1998 to conceal the losses including rental agreements, tenancy agreements and financial statements purporting to be on the letter head of a firm of accountants then known as BDO Nelson Parkhill.
It was not until 1998, shortly after Mr Fukusato was removed from his responsibilities as property manager of the Australian-based assets, that that fraud was uncovered.
The sentence today follows unsuccessful appeals by Mr Fukusato to the Court of Criminal Appeal and the High Court to quash the indictment that was earlier presented against him in the District Court.
ASIC Website: Printed 01/06/2009
