Richina fights to overturn liquidation

Richard Yan is the sole director of Richina Global Real Estate.

A company directed by former Mainzeal board member Richard Yan is appealing a liquidation order and has made an urgent application to the High Court to put it on hold.

Richina Global Real Estate, whose sole director is Yan, was put into liquidation on February 27 by Justice Brendan Brown after an application by BDO, the liquidators of Mainzeal Property and Construction.

Mainzeal, whose former board members included ex-Prime Minister Jenny Shipley, was a building business which collapsed in 2013 leaving 2000 unsecured creditors at the time claiming an estimated $93.5 million.

Following the court order last week, BDO were also appointed liquidators for Richina Global Real Estate (RGREL).

Yan has filed an appeal against RGREL's liquidation order and yesterday his Queen's Counsel, David Chisholm, made an urgent application for staying Justice Brown's judgment.

Chisholm said BDO as liquidator of Mainzeal claims to be a creditor of RGREL, which it is also liquidator of.

"There's a direct conflict," he told the court.

Chisholm said one of the "conflicts" in this case was the liquidator of one company in the group sourcing information to be used in the liquidation of the other.

"One cannot use formal procedures to obtain information from one company and then use that information in the context of liquidation of another," he said.

The lawyer for Mainzeal's liquidators, Zane Kennedy, said the court did not have the jurisdiction to make the stay as the liquidation order had already been executed.

"The court can't say now, because it simply doesn't have the jurisdiction, that we're going to stop the order which is already executed and we're going to roll the clock back and pretend it hasn't occurred," he said.

Justice Brown reserved his decision yesterday but made directions in the meantime that the liquidators are to take no further steps in the liquidation pending his judgment.