Two bankrupt after bowling club funds not returned

Trevor Laing

Two members of a defunct Dunedin bowling club have been made bankrupt after failing to return monies wrongfully taken by them from the sale of the club's Dunedin premises.

Liquidator Trevor Laing has spent two years tracking down $350,000 in proceeds from the sale of the Otago Bowling Club, in Arthur St, which was split among members rather than given to community interests as per the club's constitution.

So far just over $210,000 had been recovered from members, but Mr Laing, who was about to finish liquidation proceedings, was not confident of retrieving much more of the remaining amount.

The two members made bankrupt were former president Lester Nash and Gaynor Hurring, who was believed to be living in Australia and who had proved difficult to contact, Mr Laing said in the report.

Among the money outstanding was $85,000 paid to a company in which Mr Nash was the sole director.

The latest liquidation report, which covered the last year, showed Mr Laing had passed on $100,000 of the recovered money to the Dunedin Lawn Bowls Stadium.

Mr Laing told the Otago Daily Times yesterday it was disappointing that the difficulty he had in retrieving money from members, and the costs associated with that, meant only $100,000 had gone back to the Dunedin bowls community.

The one key piece of information he still wanted to find was where the $85,000 went.

''It's a sizeable amount of money and it's the one lump of money that I don't know where it went.''

Mr Nash said he was ''innocent'' and any wrongdoing was based on advice from A1 Accounting Limited director and accountant Lucien Van der Bijl.

He declined to comment on what had happened to the $85,000 payment.

Mr Van der Bijl declined to comment on his involvement.

Dunedin Lawn Bowls Stadium vice president John Latimer said it was grateful for the $100,000 and for the work done by Mr Laing to recover the money.

The stadium benefited the whole Dunedin bowls community and the money would go towards buying new equipment, paying off debt and supporting a programme allowing intellectually handicapped children to play bowls.