IRD more confident Serepisos will pay

Terry Serepisos. Photo / Getty Images

The Inland Revenue Department appears more confident that Wellington property and football tycoon Terry Serepisos will be able to pay his debts.

For months IRD has been seeking to liquidate five of the developer's Century City companies, including the one which owns the Phoenix A-League soccer club.

But its attitude appeared to soften today at the latest hearing in the High Court at Wellington, which was adjourned for 10 minutes while lawyer Justin Toebes - appearing for Serepisos who was not present - received telephone confirmation of a forthcoming overseas loan.

Century City Football, Century City Developments, Century City Management, Century City Investments and Century City Hunter Street owe IRD more than $3.5 million including PAYE and KiwiSaver contributions for Phoenix players.

The final deadline for some of the money is now due.

IRD and ACC (which is owed more than $355,000 by the football company and $95,616 by the development company) backed an application by Mr Toebes for a further month-long adjournment for the loan to be secured.

It is understood the promise of a $US100 million rescue package has come from controversial offshore financier Western Gulf Advisory.

As a backstop, Mr Serepisos has offered properties in Wellington and Roseneath as security for payment of the tax debt.

On Monday, Associate Judge David Gendall refused a request from Mr Toebes for a six-week adjournment, saying the matters had been before the court at least four times and could not "be allowed to simply drift".

But today the court was assured by IRD lawyer Rocky Meng that some progress had been made.

"The Commissioner is saying he now has increased confidence the loan can be put in place in four weeks to pay all the debts."

The associate judge agreed to a further delay until April 18, the next available date for a hearing, but warned there would be no further adjournments.

He also said he had "some concerns" over an oral application by Mr Toebes that each of the Century City files be sealed.

The reasons given were that they contained sensitive commercial information concerning funding "and other matters".

The five liquidation applications had been "relatively high profile" and the subject of wide media coverage.

"Essentially the horse has bolted," Associate Judge Gendall said.

He was not prepared to make a blanket order sealing all the files but would consider the material contained in them and seal parts of them as he saw fit.

- NZPA