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Bridgecorp founder Rod Petricevic is claiming receivers of his failed finance company owe him a golden handshake worth more than $1 million.
In the High Court yesterday Petricevic's lawyer made claims including $190,385 worth of redundancy payments, $63,461 of holiday pay, $21,950 for repayments on his vehicle, and $27,129 for expenses including taxis, his telephone bill and lawyers' fees.
Petricevic is also claiming bonuses amounting to $550,000 and salary of $275,000. In total he would get a payment of $757,000 after tax.
Bridgecorp collapsed last July owing almost $460 million to 14,500 debenture investors.
Last week Bridgecorp Management Services, a related entity of the company now in the hands of receivers, took action against Petricevic through a summary judgment a claim against the debtor, usually taken when it is believed there is no reasonable defence against it.
Representing the receivers, lawyer Murray Tingey of Bell Gully said Bridgecorp had paid Petricevic's tax amounting to $567,100 on his million-dollar income since 2006. The receivers are claiming this money back, plus two years' interest of $74,000, to pay the company's investors.
But rather than agreeing to pay it back, Petricevic has turned it around to claim the $1 million he believes the company owes him.
Tingey said Petricevic's claims were not signed off by the Bridgecorp board and could be disputed under the 2000 Employment Relations Act. But Petricevic's lawyer Paul Dale disputes this and argues the payments in question had been signed off by two Bridgecorp directors.
He said the receivers' argument "might border on ingenuous" but claimed the application held no ground. Petricevic's claims were genuine: "It was not something surreptitious or underhand."
Tingey claimed Petricevic's employment contract stated the performance-related bonuses would be reviewed following a report on Bridgecorp and his progress, sometime after June last year.
But, as the company went into receivership on July 3, this report had not been issued.
Tingey then pointed to the correlation between the dates of the claims and those of the receivership Bridgecorp went into receivership on July 3, 2007 and Bridgecorp Management Services went into receivership on December 18.
Salary claims were made on July 1, 2007 and December 19 and performance bonus claims were made on June 30.
Dale said Petricevic did not have a signed copy of the employment contract, but said his client had "discussed the payments with the directors and it was agreed to be paid".
Dale said he didn't know whether the directors knew about Bridgecorp's financial situation when they agreed to payments.
He suggested that if the receivers were successful in other court proceedings then they could look at claiming the money.
But Tingey said: "It's a debt, that's why it is relevant to this court."
Associate Judge Robinson will make a decision in the next week.
An elderly investor who lost money in the Bridgecorp collapse said as far as he was concerned Petricevic was a "cheeky brute".
The Auckland investor - who asked not to be named - said: "I would have thought he had got everything he could out of the company before it went bung."
In a separate action Tingey will represent Bridgecorp Management Services in a High Court case to sue Petricevic for his salary and bonuses of $1.12 million in 2007 and $1.22 million in 2006. A date has not been set for that hearing.
BRIDGECORP
* A finance company which specialised in lending to property developers.
* Founded by Rod Petricevic, a high-profile Aucklander.
* Went into receivership in July last year.
* Owes about $500 million to 18,000 investors.
* Investors might get back 16c of every $1 they put in, bringing total losses to $390 million
