Gerald Shirtcliff

Gerald Morton Shirtcliff[a] (born 1945) is a New Zealand convicted fraudster who supervised the construction of the CTV Building in the 1980s, which collapsed in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and caused 115 deaths.

His father, Morton Shirtcliff, was a business executive who was the manager of Shell Oil for the South Island at the end of his career.

[4] Shirtcliff's early jobs did not work out for him, so he got a commercial pilot's licence at Wanganui Flying School, and was taught by his father.

Shirtcliff worked there from 1968 to 1969 in Pretoria at the engineering consultancy company Van Niekerk, Klein and Edwards (now known as VKE), as a junior technician.

[4][5] According to an Niek Diedericks, an associate of the time, Shirtcliff told him that he was avoiding the draft for the Vietnam War, despite New Zealand not having one.

[4] Shirtcliff moved to Sydney in late 1969, and according to Stuff, stole the identity of a former colleague in South Africa:[5] William Anthony Fisher, an English engineer.

"[6] In 1972 he applied to join the Australian Institute of Engineers[3] and for some time was a fleet manager for Streets ice cream.

[3][4] After moving back to New Zealand, Shirtcliff and Murray Cresswell, a commercial pilot he had met at Christchurch Airport, decided to start a regional airline, Goldfields Air, which failed in 1986 due to disagreements between the two.

[4] In 2005, in attempt to sell a failing vehicle-service franchise, Shirtcliff provided Queenstown buyers with fake GST tax returns, making the business appear to be doing well.

[1] He has worked on the Kingsgate Hotel in the Kings Cross Centre in Sydney, mining, power stations, and the 80-metre tall flagpole on Parliament House in Canberra.

[5] For the engineering companies Worley Parsons and Sedgman Limited he worked on coal projects at Boggabri, Codrilla, Maules Creek, Lake Vermont and Caval Ridge, Mount Isa Mines and in New Auckland in Gladstone.

[17][22] In August 2014 Shirtcliff was fined $500,000 after pleading guilty to 146 charges brought by the Queensland Board of Professional Engineers in Magistrates Court.

Shirtcliff used Fisher's name, birthdate, birthplace and Bachelor of Engineering degree from the University of Sheffield in England.

[4] On an episode of the news television show 60 minutes Fisher said about the identity theft that "It makes me feel pretty rotten; my name is stuck there like mud isn't it?

[10] In 2012 Shirtcliff said that he had been living in Australia with the name "Fisher" due to "family issues" that had been lasting for 40 years.