Court tells Matauri X group to clear debts

A Maori Land Court judge has instructed a Far North Maori group to work on a plan to repay crippling multi-million dollar debt held over its ancestral land.

Judge Andrew Spencer has appointed five members of the board of Matauri X to work on the plan prepared by a court-appointed administrator to repay the debt over four years.

The decision was made at a continuation of a hearing attended by Matauri X Incorporation representatives and the administrator, Kevin Gillespie.

Maori landowners were forced to subdivide some of their 500ha at Matauri Bay, in the Far North, after a failed 2001 business venture. The investment failed after Matauri X, led by then-chairman Hemi Rua Rapata, borrowed money from Bridgecorp and Instant Funding to invest in the Eternal Waters mineral water company.

The venture was projected to return up to $18 million over six years but went bust, leaving the Ngati Kura hapu with debts approaching $6 million.

That debt is believed to have now soared to more than $20 million because of penalties incurred when the shareholders could not meet payments to Strategic Finance, which owned the debt.

The group set up Matauri Bay Developments Ltd to sell the two stages of the subdivision - stage one with 81 sections and stage two with 58. Only eight have sold.

Mr Gillespie said the court appointed Audrey Robin, Anahera Pomare, Marcellus Jenkins, Karleen Broughton and Pene Broughton to work on the plan. Another committee member and former Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels missed out but Mr Gillespie said they could be appointed by shareholders when four other members were chosen.

Having reached that point, Mr Gillespie said the court and he were stepping out of the case.

The receivers of Strategic Finance want to convert the subdivision into general freehold title, but the agreement was not conditional on that happening and Mr Gillespie said it might be that the subdivision sections got Maori freehold title, rather than general freehold title.

Mr Gillespie said if 73 lots were sold, almost $15 million would be paid off, otherwise the loan deal would need to be re-negotiated.