The Maori Land Court was complicit in events which led to a Matauri X Incorporation debt ballooning from about $2.5 million to $15 million over the past decade, former Maori Affairs Minister and major Matauri X shareholder Dover Samuels says.
The Matauri X case was a "poison chalice", he suggested to Judge Michael Doogan during a hearing in the Maori Land Court at Whangarei this week.
Judge Doogan, who had inherited the case following the retirement of Judge Andrew Spencer, was hearing an application by Matauri Bay Properties Ltd - which is half-owned by Matauri X - to convert 10 Maori leasehold sections at Matauri Bay to freehold title.
The change in status would improve the sale prospects and price for other land in an 81-section subdivision from the 500ha of prime coastal land Matauri X's 470 shareholders have at Matauri Bay.
The land was mortgage collateral when the Matauri X management committee borrowed $2.8 million from Bridgecorp Finance Ltd in 2001 to invest in a mineral water company which folded the following year.