KEY POINTS:
Bridgecorp's investors may not have to wait too long before getting to enjoy some vicarious satisfaction by watching as "Rocking" Rod Petricevic is stripped of the keys to his Porsche 911 for good.
The $120,000 Porsche, which is in the High Court's keeping, has become a symbol of
the distress the investors feel.
Petricevic may have had his passport taken off him, the Porsche seized and been declared bankrupt, but he is still enjoying at least some of the fruits of his former high-living lifestyle.
That's because he has used a family trust to protect his Remuera home from creditors (at least in the short-term) and has ensured all major chattels are in his wife's name.
But arrogance was on display right from the start with Bridgecorp's television advertisements for its secured debentures exhorting investors to minimise the risk.
One advertisement even had William Tell firing an arrow at an apple sitting on his son's head, at point blank range. The apple was much larger than the boy. The moral of the story: that investors were at no risk of getting the target.
Petricevic has been down the company collapse path before with the disastrous failure of Euronational. He should have known he was not bullet-proof when running financial companies.
But - just like Tell and his mythical son - he's tried to ensure that he stays personally bullet-proof.
The financial model used to prop up Bridgecorp's finances had become extremely shaky well before the plug was finally pulled in July last year.
The first port of call for any receiver would be to look at whether the company's leading lights had tried to tuck away personal assets into either trusts or their spouses' name.
Transferring the Porsche into the family trust's name just days after the Bridgecorp collapse was an act of stunning arrogance. If anything was bound to rankle with creditors, this was it.
Even the Court of Appeal has suspicions about the ownership structures Petricevic has used.
The official assignee and the Bridgecorp receiver will now be able to look behind the trust veil and determine whether it is in creditors' interests to challenge the structure.
They will have to weigh up the costs of any legal challenge against available returns. But irrespective of whether they can recover major amounts or not, they should go ahead.
There have been too many instances of unsophisticated small-time investors, who haven't put their key assets into trusts, being forced to sell up because of the collapse.
There is an issue of equity here. If the receiver does not pursue Petricevic with all its might, yet goes hard after the small investors, it just reinforces the notion that a business person whose imprudence costs others their savings can still come out the other end with assets intact. In Petricevic's case this would no doubt compensate for the damage to his reputation.
Petricevic is vulnerable because of the assertion that Bridgecorp collected $92.5 million from investors in the five months before the collapse and the claim that it had just $45,000 available to pay $2m due to investors on April 13 - three months before the failure was notified.
These allegations have been revealed in court documents.
But the prime claim - which is the subject of legal action - is that Petricevic and a colleague made a false statement to the debenture holders' trustee in a directors' certificate on April 30 last year.
That certificate said interest and principal had been paid or satisfied on due dates - when, in reality, there had been a series of late payments.
Petricevic will rigorously defend the Companies Act charge - but if he is unsuccessful he could end up behind bars.
Petricevic was paid $4m between July 2004 and June 2007 and had taken $1.6m in advances from his family trust since March 2000.
He says he owes the trust $5m and is insolvent.
The Serious Fraud Office is also investigating Bridgecorp.
