Disgraced CEO Tim Boyd wants to clear his name 'fully and without fault'
Friday, 25 November 2022
Tim Boyd was previously the boss of a Christchurch City Council company, but it has been revealed that he is wanted in the US on drink-driving charges.
Stuff has been reporting on Boyd since September and this is the first time he has commented publicly.
He claims “false and defamatory accusations” have been published. He says he will take legal action.
Disgraced former CEO Tim Boyd says he is taking legal action to clear his name “fully and without fault”, but he won’t say who that action will be against, how exactly he has been defamed, or where he is currently living.
Boyd had a six-month stint earlier this year as the boss of the Christchurch City Council’s holdings company. He resigned in September.
Shortly afterwards, it emerged that he was wanted in Arizona on unresolved 2018 drink-driving charges, and was previously ordered to pay more than $30 million in damages as part of civil lawsuits in the United States, which involved allegations of fraud and unpaid money.
On Friday morning, Boyd emailed Stuff with a six paragraph statement, which said “false and defamatory accusations' had been published and he would take legal action to clear his name “fully and without fault”.
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**
Replying by email to follow-up questions, he said the defamatory accusations were of a “personal and professional nature” and, “I have conducted no wrongdoing on a personal or professional basis.”
Boyd said court proceedings, confidentiality obligations, legislation and agreements between lawyers meant his comments were “limited until these matters are concluded”.
He claimed court orders in his defence “have already been successfully obtained for the takedown of false and defamatory accusations.”
“These orders are currently being enforced.”
Boyd has previously gone to court to have online information removed.
In 2019, he went to Australia’s Federal Court to try and get a website domain company to remove a website and reveal who registered it. Boyd claimed it contained defamatory material. (The court ordered the domain company to provide material about who registered the website).
The website, timboydaustralian.com, mentioned some of the civil court judgements against him.
The Federal Court noted in its judgment that it was not in a position to test whether the website’s claims were true and noted Boyd had not produced evidence of the “objective falsity of the published claims'.
In his statement on Friday, Boyd claimed three independent investigations “have all cleared my actions, name and conduct, past and present.”
There have been three investigations into Boyd’s work in New Zealand.
The company he was boss of, Christchurch City Holdings Ltd (CCHL), previously ordered a law firm to review his background and legal matters. The review is due to be presented to the CCHL board next week. A CCHL spokesman would not comment on its findings.
The Ministry of Social Development (MSD), where Boyd was employed as an IT contractor from March 2019 to September 2021, conducted a review, but only to “establish whether there is any cause for concern in Boyd’s work”. The review found “no substantive concerns” with it.
Another investigation involving Boyd and his communication with the CCHL board took place earlier this year within CCHL. It found “no action was warranted”. The investigation is a “protected disclosure”, meaning it is confidential.
Boyd said in his statement that there were legal avenues for him to get accusations retracted, “preliminary legacy” charges dropped without convictions, and judgments set aside without fault.
Those final two points are likely references to his unresolved 2018 charges in Arizona and civil lawsuits he faced in the US, some of which he did not appear for or contest.
Boyd said his decision to resign from CCHL was, “in no way had any connection to the false and defamatory accusations subsequently published”.
His decision to resign was “as stated in the market release”, he said. That release said he resigned due to “differences of opinion” with the CCHL board.
Boyd said he did not comment publicly in past months because, he claimed, journalists disregarded or barely quoted him.
In mid-September, a lawyer for Boyd told BusinessDesk that he had no outstanding debts in the US “that he was aware of” and he fully disclosed his work history when applying for the job at CCHL.
The lawyer “stressed” that Boyd had no criminal convictions in NZ or elsewhere.