The personal income and expenditure of Michael Swann was queried by Dunedin businessman Sir Clifford Skeggs, who yesterday said he informally raised concerns with members of the Otago District Health Board.
The publication in the Otago Daily Times yesterday of a warning letter about Swann written by two accountants prompted information that other similar letters may exist.
Sir Clifford was one individual mentioned.
Sir Clifford, who is in Fiji on business, yesterday rejected speculation he was the author of any written warning.
However, he said he had spoken to health board members "casually" about Swann in about 2005-06.
He became aware of Swann in Port Chalmers when they were both having work done on their respective boats, prompting Swann to be nicknamed "money bags" because of the amount of work he was having done.
"I thought 'where's this guy getting his funds from?' I did say to people in the hospital board arena that I couldn't comprehend how a man could spend so much money," Sir Clifford said.
"I made some inquiries because I was very, very, suspicious and accosted him once," he said.
Sir Clifford, like other acquaintances and colleagues of Swann, was told his wealth came from a computer program Swann had sold in the United States.
Sir Clifford, a former mayor of Dunedin, was the health board chairman for seven months before a falling-out with the National government in 1993.
Swann and business associate Kerry Harford are in jail on remand awaiting sentencing after being found guilty on Friday of defrauding the health board of $16.9 million.
The purported author of an alleged separate second warning letter was contacted yesterday but declined to be interviewed.
Among the more than 60 pages of documents held by the ODT are lawyer's notes from a December 2006 interview with a representative of a Dunedin firm which said the company was aware of Swann's "chequered history".
Although they were "unsubstantiated allegations", a partner of the firm took those concerns to the health board about mid-1998.
"One of the . . . partners communicated it to the chair," the lawyer's file note says.
