With a cavalier disregard for rules prohibiting undischarged bankrupts operating a business, twice bankrupt Aaron Coupe (also known as Aaron McGregor) was described as a very active and glib salesman of ridiculous business schemes. He misled creditors by using an alias and hid from Insolvency Service money owed bankruptcy creditors.
Over a fifteen year period, he ignored rules prohibiting him from running a business or acting as a company director.
Creditors went unpaid, while he hid money in his mother’s bank account.
He is currently appealing a Companies Act sentence of four years five months imprisonment for acting as a company director when disqualified.
Disqualification as a company director was automatic after his earlier 2016 Insolvency Act conviction for running a business whilst bankrupt.
This Companies Act conviction followed a failed project to build a luxury hotel in Auckland to be called The Liberte, and a further failed project to develop a chain of hotels under the brand Tomorrow Hotels.
Company creditors were left owed some three million dollars.
After being found guilty of Companies Act breaches following a jury trial, he failed to show up for sentencing. Arrested and brought before the court, he was sentenced in 2025 to the four year five month’s imprisonment, now under appeal.
Separately, he appealed a different 2025 conviction: a three year nine month’s sentence, convicted of Insolvency Act offences for running a business and concealing assets whilst bankrupt for a second time.
These convictions arose from construction projects Coupe managed during the period of his second bankruptcy; projects left unfinished, and owners left stranded.
Two of his customers lost their life savings, left living in a caravan on their property with a botched home renovation leaving their home uninhabitable.
Evidence was given of Coupe taking some $1.7 million from customers whilst bankrupt, money both spent on living expenses and hidden from Insolvency Services.
At this point, he had paid only $25,000 of a $75,100 reparations order negotiated as part of sentencing for Insolvency Act convictions following his first bankruptcy. A reparations agreement which at that time saw him receiving a more lenient sentence of home detention, the court was told.
Back in the High Court, Justice Gardiner reduced his most recent Insolvency Act sentence by forty per cent.
His two separate sentences in 2025 for breaches respectively of the Companies Act and the Insolvency Act must be served cumulatively, not concurrently.
Taking a wider picture, Justice Gardiner ruled current combined sentences of over eight year’s imprisonment for the accumulated offences was too severe, even given the seriousness of Coupe’s fifteen years offending.
Coupe v. R – High Court (24.11.25)
26.023