And Greg King, representing Swann's friend Kerry Harford, delivered what he called "five body blows" to the allegation his client was involved in multimillion-dollar fraud against the Otago District Hospital Board.
Swann (47), the board's former chief information officer and Harford (48), a Queenstown surveyor, both deny three charges each of dishonestly, and with intent to defraud, using 198 invoices in the name of Sonnford Solutions, a company set up by Harford, to obtain $16.9 million from the board between August 2000 and August 2006.
The Crown says the invoices were for various IT-related services and products never supplied, that Swann, without authorisation, signed contracts which were actually a sham, a fraud and made no sense.
The board was charged for non-existent services, Swann receiving just over $15 million in six years, while the board was paying him an annual salary of $145,000 in his role as head of IT.
The remaining $1.8 million was retained by Harford.
In his closing address, Mr Bates said the contracts and the invoices clearly showed the two men acted fraudulently and could not claim they believed they were entitled to do what they did.
None of the invoices, said to be for risk mitigation insurance, mentioned any such arrangement.
They were for firmware and software upgrades and licences.
Swann was clearly skilled in the IT area, came in when things were changing at the board, quickly took control of the department and, because of his knowledge and the level of trust he had, saw an opportunity to make some money, despite the fact he was being paid by the board.
He could start putting in invoices for maintenance, software support, various firmware and software upgrades, invoices which did not stand out and which got through the hospital payment system.
But he needed some assistance so enlisted the help of his good friend Kerry Harford, a surveyor, with little knowledge of computers or IT.
Harford formed Sonnford Solutions for the purpose of rendering the invoices, not for the purpose of doing any work.
The contracts on which the invoices were supposedly based probably did not exist when the first invoices were sent, Mr Bates said, some having been signed several years after Sonnfords received the first payments, and they did not match the invoices.
Swann had no authority to sign such contracts and was well aware of the conflict of interest, that he as a board employee should not have been benefiting to the tune of millions of dollars via Sonnfords and his own company Computer South.
As to what he called the "Clayton's" maintenance cover, the "opening the gate" policy where Sonnfords would call in the necessary experts and materials if there was a major problem with the servers, then charge the board for the work, Mr Bates said "it sticks out a mile - the contracts and what they're for are totally fraudulent".
Harford knew the details he put in the invoices, from information provided by Swann, were false.
He knew services had not been supplied, upgrades installed or reports written, that Sonnfords held no software or computer-related licences.
"It was money for jam, money for nothing," Mr Bates told the jury.
But Mr Haigh said, while Swann might be guilty of a lot of things - breaching his employment contract, breaching his delegated authority, failing to put his employer's interests first, failing to record a conflict of interest and breaching the Income Tax Act and the civil law- those actions did not make him guilty of criminal offending.
At first glance, Swann's actions might seem unreasonable.
The fees were exceedingly high and he was effectively "involved at both ends of the contract", but the jury had to look at whether the Crown had proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that in acting as he did, Swann knew he was deceiving his employer, that he did not have an honest belief or claim of right.
And even if he had a mistaken belief he could initiate the Sonnford contracts, that did not constitute an offence.
"Even if you think these contracts were not value for money, and there were still all these other breaches, it still comes down to his honest belief, what he intended, what he knew, his belief at the time," Mr Haigh said.
And he said that time was when the invoices were issued under Swann's direction, not when he was buying expensive cars, the highly prejudicial motive the Crown suggested for the offending.
The risk mitigation insurance was never put to the test because Swann and his team managed to maintain the hospital's computer system for several years without any major problems.
It was accepted the contracts had been badly drafted and the invoices undeniably did not reflect what Swann said he intended "and for that he's at fault", Mr Haigh told the jury.
But Swann's evidence was he kept the system going and honestly believed the contracts were legitimate and the invoicing proper.
To acquit him did not invite them to approve of what Swann did, or to like him, but to recognise the Crown had failed to prove the absence of honest belief, Mr Haigh said.
For Harford, Mr King asked why, if the arrangement where Sonnfords invoiced the board for computer-related services and passed 90% to the Swann-controlled company Computer South was a sham, would Harford take only a 10% cut.
It was "absurd" that a person would embark on a dishonest course of conduct to defraud $17 million and take only 10%, he suggested.
Secondly, if the the scheme was a sham, why would Swann need to use Sonnfords? He was not a director or shareholder of Computer South, and Peter Ibbotson and Anna Devereux "signed whatever was put in front of them.
He [Swann] could have set up anything he liked and run exactly the same sham through that".
Why, if he was involved in a sham, would Harford write a letter to the Inland Revenue Department, after falling behind in his GST returns, when "the last thing you would be wanting to do is attract the interest of the IRD"?
Sonnford's was being run as a legitimate business, paying tax, filing financial statements, paying its directors, which included Harford, and paying expenses, which was 90% of everything which came in being passed on to Computer South.
He did not understand computers or contracts, and trusted his charismatic, eloquent and persuasive friend, who had a "very flash-sounding position" at the board as its chief information officer - "someone you would think had the authority to enter into contracts".
