Waiwera Resort in hot water with creditors, debts put at $5m

The well-known elephant statues without water. Photo/Anne Gibson

Troubled pool business Waiwera Thermal Resort is in hot water with creditors, owing around $5 million, according to the first liquidators' report.

Tony Maginness and Jared Booth, Staples Rodway liquidators, have just issued their first report into the failure of the business which once ran the resort visited by tens of thousands of people annually.

Claims are:
• Kiwibank $1.2m;
• Waiwera Group $2.1m
• Unsecured creditors $1.1m
• Inland Revenue $584,841

A creditor applied successfully to the High Court to have the company liquidated and a list of creditors has now been released, showing big entities claiming money including Kiwibank, Inland Revenue, Auckland Council, Vodafone, Watercare Services, Contact Energy, Sky TV, Hirepool, ASB, NZ Crane Hire, NZ Safety, Bidfood, Lowndes Jordan and Genesis.

Since 2010, Waiwera Thermal Resort has held the lease to use the resort but last year the property was shut, leaving extensive but only-partly completed renovations, many people out of pocket and the landowner cancelling the lease.

Waiwera Thermal Resort's directors are Leon Fingerhut of Las Vegas and Russian Mikhail Khimich. The company is fully owned by Ordover Trust, listed as being at the same Las Vegas address as Fingerhut.

Kiwibank is owed $1.2m but has a first-ranking general security agreement, the liquidators said. Waiwera Group, associated with the liquidated company, is claiming $2.1m and has a second-ranking agreement. Inland Revenue is owed $584,000.

Unsecured creditors are owed $1.1m but the report said that excludes the contingent claim from the company's landlord. The report lists the names of all unsecured creditors who have filed documents with the liquidators.

A list of 87 creditors appears in the report.

They include lawyers, crane and safety businesses, building material suppliers, painters, engineers, consultants, scaffolders, accountants, soft drink manufacturers, packaging suppliers, living plant suppliers, planning, security, sales, plumbing, engineering, eftpos and filtration businesses.

The creditor who applied for the liquidation is owed $22,000 after winning court-awarded costs, the report said. Amounts owed to employees is unknown.

Bidfood, the wholesale food distributor, applied to put the resort in liquidation, according to a public notice.

The liquidators said they had "entered into correspondence" with the American Fingerhut, entered the Waiwera premises and carried out an inspection of the property to look for available assets, got independent advice from a registered valuer, secured the books and records of the companies and corresponded with creditors.

They now plan to realise all available assets but do not propose to hold a creditors' meeting.

It is too early to say when the liquidation might be finished and accounts' receivable and fixed assets were listed as unknown in the accounts, the report said.