KEY POINTS:
Unless he finds $650,000 between now and Thursday, bankruptcy looks inevitable for Rod Petricevic after the Bridgecorp founder yesterday lost a Court of Appeal bid for a further stay of proceedings brought by receivers.
Bridgecorp's receivers began the proceedings against Petricevic last month after he failed to pay $576,100 into a court trust account as ordered by the High Court. That sum represented what Bridgecorp paid to Inland Revenue in September 2006 to cover Petricevic's personal tax bill.
Petricevic was yesterday seeking a stay on the bankruptcy proceedings in order to gain time for an appeal against the High Court's summary judgment in June ordering him to repay the money plus $74,000 in interest to Bridgecorp and its receivers.
But Court of Appeal Justices Ronald Young, Mark O'Regan and Bruce Robertson turned down the application for a stay. They said explanations that the money paid by Bridgecorp to IRD represented an advance on Petricevic's remuneration lacked plausibility, particularly given that Petricevic continued to receive payments from the company over subsequent months totalling $900,000.
They gave little credence to claims from Petricevic's lawyer Paul Dale that the sum paid was partly offset by work done by Petricevic between the time Bridgecorp was placed in receivership in early July last year, and December, when Bridgecorp Management Services was also put in receivership.
Petricevic has said he is unable to come up with the $576,100, despite being paid $4 million in the three years to 2007, but the judges noted he had failed to indicate how much he could come up with. They said financial records given as evidence were so incomplete as to prompt the question "What was being hidden?"
Furthermore, they said a $47,000 performance bonus, which Petricevic also wanted to offset against the payment to IRD, was for a period that ended shortly before Bridgecorp was placed in receivership and was "just not plausible".
While Bridgecorp's receiver, Colin McCloy of PricewaterhouseCoopers, would probably prefer to receive the money, if Petricevic is declared bankrupt an official assignee will assume control of his affairs and gain access to personal finance records.
