IRD, lawyers make claims on Waiwera Group: liquidators' report on failed water, hot pools

Khimich with Belarusian ex-model girlfriend Maria Dzidirava in 2012. Photo / supplied

Inland Revenue, a law firm, commercial barrister, logistics business and sole shareholder are creditors claiming money from failed parent company Waiwera Group, connected to the defunct water bottling and hot pools resort business north of Auckland.

The first liquidators' report just out on the company has a schedule of creditors listing IRD in Wellington, Auckland commercial barrister David L Marriott, Auckland law firm Hudson Gavin Martin, logistics company Chempro and Russian Mikhail Khimich who owns the business.

Tony Maginness and Jared Booth of Baker Tilly Staples Rodway's Queen St offices said the shareholder - Khimich - had put the company into liquidation although they did not name him specifically as taking that action.

They also cited Khimich's bankruptcy.

He is the sole director and shareholder of the business which is no longer operating from the waterfront properties in leased in the seaside town.

Waiwera Group's associated companies are Waiwera Thermal Resort, Waiwera Water New Zealand and Waiwera Global. All four businesses are now in liquidation, the liquidators noted.

Insufficient information means they cannot produce a statement of financial position for Waiwera Group but they have secured the books and records of the company and started their review.

Waiwera Thermal Resort last October. Photo / Anne Gibson

Bank accounts had been frozen, they noted.

The liquidators now intend to realise any assets and investigate what happened but propose no creditors' meeting.

The Herald reported last week how Waiwera's hot pools north of Auckland remain shut, deserted and idle as a business connected to the once-popular resort sinks into liquidation.

The once-popular Waiwera Thermal Resort has been left in a decrepit state after an abrupt closure. It was shut a year ago for renovations, but work eventually ceased and now the property is in a parlous state with drained or murky pools, piles of dirt, littering and overgrown gardens.

Pools abandoned, drained. Photo / Anne Gibson

Renovation work has been paused, and some buildings are missing roofs or have been left half-finished.

In November last year, the Herald reported how a giant Australasian leisure business, which runs 10 New Zealand pools, wanted to talk to the pool landowners.

Damian Gorman, business development manager of the large Victorian-headquartered Belgravia Health & Leisure Group, said his business was interested in starting the discussion

A lease on the pool complex was cancelled in October last year, after a two-year period of sporadic leasehold payment defaults, the resort's landowner said. Locks were changed and a notice posted on the front door, the landowner said.

The complex had been leased to Khimich whose business bought the lease in 2010. No workers have been on the site for more than a year now.