KEY POINTS:
A finance broker who used to work on investment schemes devised by property developer Dan McEwan says more than 1000 investors may be out of pocket.
Peter Speers, of Auckland property finance firm Moneyscience, says he spent the last six months of his time working for McEwan advising people not to invest with him.
McEwan ran three-day, $5000 seminars through his vehicle the Investors Forum, at which he advocated his model of property investment.
It involved buying shares in a series of property developments, including the two-stage Pounamu luxury apartment project in Queenstown, the Crystal Waters apartments in Cable Bay, Northland, and the redevelopment of north Auckland spa town Waiwera.
When the developments were completed and sold, investors were to share in the capital gain. McEwan claimed they could double their money, investors said.
Speers doubts anyone has made anything. "Put it this way, I can't tell you five people who've made any money."
This paper has spoken to many angry investors. Two said that not only have they seen no return on their original investments, they are now being asked for $1.3 million and $900,000 respectively to settle on apartments in the Pounamu development.
They say they never agreed to the purchases and have seen only incomplete documentation.
Next week an Auckland District Court decision is due on whether McEwan illegally promoted projects in Queensland and Fiji to a Dunedin investor without a prospectus. Both projects failed. McEwan claims the man was a professional investor and therefore didn't require a prospectus.
A string of McEwan projects have hit trouble. Investors in Crystal Waters have pooled funds to take action over the development. Wairarapa barrister Gareth Bodle, who is helping the group of a dozen, said they were owed $4 million and were seeking their money back.
Crystal Waters Ltd was one of five McEwan companies wound up by the Inland Revenue Department in the High Court at Auckland last week.
Meanwhile, at Waiwera the company running the proposed hotel development, Waiwera Stage One Ltd, faces a liquidation hearing in two weeks.
McEwan said last week the big Waiwera project was on hold because of tough economic times and part of the land was being sold in an "internal transaction".
Seers, who attended a shareholders meeting about the sale, said this involved the original owner - John Brown of the nearby Waiwera Infinity Spa Resort - taking the land back in exchange for his shares in the project.
It's unclear how this will help other investors. McEwan said the deal was confidential.
Last month McEwan said the proposal to redevelop the ill-fated Sheraton Hotel project in the Cook Islands as a Hilton, announced a year ago, was only in the planning phase.
And in Dunedin, investors and the local council are asking what has happened to the McEwan proposed redevelopment of the city's historic former chief post office as a Hilton.
McEwan said it was "nonsense" that no one in the Investors Forum had made money.
The market had changed, he said.
"If you have an investor that's not happy they should come and see me. Simple."
WHAT'S GOING ON
A Northland investor in Dan McEwan's Investors Forum says he's had "absolutely just no information whatsoever" about progress on the group's property developments.
The man has invested $600,000 since 2005 in McEwan projects such as the Pounamu in Queenstown, Crystal Waters in the Far North, the proposed Hilton in Rarotonga, and Waiwera.
He has had no return on his money, he says. Now he says the developers are asking him to stump up $1.3 million to settle on one of the Pounamu apartments. "Here I am running around now, I've got to see a lawyer on Monday to try and get myself out of the shit. My wife and I will probably go bankrupt on this one."
The man says McEwan had offered to go halves with the couple in an apartment. "He said to us, you have a think about it, so we signed, and I thought he was coming back into the room to sign it. [I] find out later he didn't sign it so we were left holding the kitty." McEwan said the project was an internal matter.
