Property developer still missing a year on from $6m failure of Valiant Homes
Tuesday, 16 February 2016
An Auckland company director who fled after his residential property development group collapsed last year owing $6 million is still nowhere to be found.
A year on the receivers and liquidators trying to unravel the Valiant Homes failure say they have no idea where Hamish Clarke is.
Creditors remain around $6.5m out of pocket. This includes $1.2m owed to tradespeople who worked on the firm's in-fill housing developments.
'I don't know if he's in New Zealand, I don't know if he's overseas,' receiver Chris McCullagh of PKF Corporate Recovery said.
'All I know is no-one seems to have heard from or seen him in quite some time.
'Hamish Clarke has been a particularly difficult person for everybody to deal with.'
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Clarke vanished soon after putting Valiant Homes into liquidation on March 4.
So did all of the company's records, computers and server.
It later emerged that as Valiant's tradies were going unpaid Clarke was in Europe staying at a $1500-a-night Italian hotel and presenting a large diamond ring to his Austrian fiancee.
Clarke also spent thousands attending seminars by American motivational speaker Tony Robbins, of whom he was reportedly a big fan.
A group of related companies which carried out Valiant's projects on Auckland's North Shore are also in liquidation.
Given the absence of accounting records the liquidators have had to rely on what related parties tell them, Gareth Hoole, liquidator of VH Projects Two Ltd, said.
'There is… evidence of inappropriate activity on the part of the director,' he said.
The Valiant Homes group went under leaving 13 properties in varying stages of completion.
Two houses on one site in Birkdale sat half-completed for months.
One of Valiant Homes' financiers, west Auckland-based Savings and Loans, called in the receivers on the day after the liquidation to protect its interests.
It has since sold three of the four properties it lent on, recovering $745,000 of its $3.2m debt.
It is continuing with an application for resource consent to develop 11 houses on a fourth North Shore site, in order to maximise its value.
The property has a CV of $1m.
Other financiers to the group have similarly continued with developments to try to recoup some of their losses.
The finance companies thought they were lending against particular projects but in reality the funds could have gone anywhere, McCullagh said.
'All the money went into Valiant and it went to pay whoever needed to be paid.
'I don't think any of these guys knew that.'
The Valiant group's debt includes $840,000 owed to the Inland Revenue Department.