KEY POINTS:
Bob Bangerter is looking every day of his 72 years. Real estate agents are strolling through the rooms of his immaculate $3 million modern home, tucked away in a quiet street in Remuera, Auckland.
Property magnate Sir Bob Jones is gunning for him; and his former partner, Mark Bryers, has left to start a new life and property investment business in Sydney.
For Bangerter, the impending house sale is a sharp reminder that things have gone horribly wrong. He is at a loss to explain why, in what should be comfy retirement years, he is facing bankruptcy for the second time in his life, or where millions of dollars of Blue Chip investors' money has gone.
What irks him most, as he sits quietly drinking tea in a home fit to feature in an interior design magazine, is that the man who intends to bankrupt him is someone he admires, someone he quotes in his property seminars but, he says, has unfairly maligned him by "tarring him with the same brush" as Bryers.
It is for this reason he has agreed to an interview. Sir Bob may well go ahead and bankrupt him, he says ("If I was in his shoes I would be doing exactly the same") but he wants it to be for the right reasons.
He wants the chance to clear his name, to set the record straight, to distance himself from the Blue Chip fallout that has caused grief to so many creditors, many of whom, such as Bangerter, will lose their homes in their retirement years.
It is grief that he and partner Maree Aitkenhead witnessed first hand from their Parnell Blue Chip franchise office. While Bryers and the staff at the Queen St head office in Qantas House blocked the lifts to stop distressed investors gaining access to their floors, Bangerter says his clients were still able to walk through his office door. And they did. Bangerter says he did not know what to tell them.
"The first I knew something was wrong was when the rents stopped being paid." He claims all the company finances were handled by head office. Bangerter was overseas at the time.
By the first week of January, Bangerter's sizeable salary from Blue Chip - his only income from the company - had stopped. Bangerter and Aitkenhead called a meeting with Bryers who came to their home the day before they were due to reopen their Parnell office.
They wanted to know if the rents would be paid on their clients' properties. Bryers assured them they would be by the end of January, Bangerter says.
Aitkenhead says it was as though Bryers was living in another world. He started discussing plans for the annual lavish sales awards function, and said he wanted to fly all key Blue Chip sales people across to Sydney.
"He said he would take them for a cruise on the canals and show them what [properties] they could sell."
Bangerter says he had no say in the running of the public Australian-listed company. He was never a director, had no access to the finances or chequebooks, and was not part of the decision-making process, he says.
"We've proven that categorically to the people who need to know."
He produces an email from Julian Gosse, Blue Chip Financial Solutions chairman, confirming his claims.
Instead his role was as a licensee and 50 per cent owner of Blue Chip Auckland (the other half was owned by Blue Chip New Zealand), which was put into liquidation earlier this month. Four years ago he left Qantas House and set up in Parnell, although Blue Chip Auckland's finances were still controlled by head office.
Bangerter says he thought the personal guarantees for the head office were no longer in place.
The letter from Robt Jones Holdings' (RJH) lawyers that arrived at his home last month came as a shock. Not only were the guarantees still in place, but there was an alleged $395,000 owing.
It is for this amount that Sir Bob says he will bankrupt Bangerter.
TRY TO pin Bangerter down on how or why he allowed to get himself into this position and he concedes defeat. He trusted Bryers, a qualified lawyer and tax accountant, with the business details, he says. He describes Bryers as "a mate" and "my icon" up until last year. "We were close but only on his terms."
Bangerter would use the line "a brain as a sharp as a razor" when referring to Bryers in his property seminars. And he meant it. "Mr Bryers is a very, very clever man."
Bangerter is not the only one to describe Bryers as clever, persuasive, charismatic even.
"Mark used to remind me that I left school at 14, that I knew nothing. He told me to leave it all to him, that everything would be all right."
Bryers, he says, kept him at arm's length. He has never been a shareholder in Bryers' Gulf Harbour Country Club but he and Bryers did buy a 22m luxury motor yacht, Nirvana, together - although in Bangerter's name and on finance. The idea was to run it as a charter boat but the partnership went sour and Bangerter took over the boat for the price of the remaining finance.
Aitkenhead built up the business to the point where it won a charter boat award last year. In February this year they were forced to sell it for $1.5 million, the amount of finance still owing to GE Finance and other parties.
Now Bangerter is on the bad end of some heavyweight personal guarantees, including the office equipment at the Qantas House offices. He is still waiting for the company to move on that one. There is an air of inevitability in his demeanour.
The considerably younger Aitkenhead is less accepting. She alternates between tears of frustration and moments of fury. Spread out on the dining room table are stacks of paperwork and files.
Back in April she and Bangerter visited the Serious Fraud Office. Since then they have handed over every email and piece of paperwork they can find to the SFO, the IRD and the Companies Office.
Aitkenhead, at least, is after blood. She says Bangerter has been unfairly blamed by the likes of Sir Bob. They claim the leases at Qantas House were reassigned in 2006 to Blue Chip Property Holdings, a company Bangerter says knew nothing about until the debt letter arrived last month. The documents show Bangerter's lawyer signed as his power of attorney but Bangerter claims he was never informed and would never have signed had he known. He and Aitkenhead are preparing to take action against the lawyer concerned.
"If we had known, we would have gone to RJH and said we are not happy to keep guaranteeing it."
As to why he agreed to sign personal guarantees for Bryers he says: "Because I trusted him. We used to have documents signed all day long. I wouldn't question them. He'd say, 'Don't worry, you know me, sign it.' And like a twit, I did."
Now, he concedes, he has been "naive and stupid" but not dishonest.
Bangerter and Bryers met eight years ago when Bryers was trying to offload some properties. Bangerter sold them quickly and Bryers was intrigued to know how.
Bangerter was selling investment properties to people who would use the equity on their homes to fund the deals. Rent returns and tax losses gave them an income, and when the property was sold at the end of the cycle, the investor received a share of the capital gain.
Bangerter and Bryers joined forces and Blue Chip was born. Bangerter was convinced he needed Bryers' business and legal skills to take the business concept to the next level - a publicly listed company.
He was impressed with Bryers' credentials: his father, Ron, was a former headmaster and All Black; his older brother, Stephen, was president of the Auckland District Law Society. Bangerter was excited. He and Bryers would make a lot of money; so would their investors. Blue Chip would eventually become a household name in New Zealand. It did, but not for the reasons Bangerter envisaged.
In the early years the scheme worked well and many investors came back to reinvest at the end of three or four-year terms.
Bangerter and Aitkenhead were so enthusiastic about the product they invested in several Blue Chip properties themselves, properties they will lose along with their home.
And, as is a familiar story in the Blue Chip saga, family members and friends joined in. Aitkenhead's aunt and uncle have lost $500,000, Bangerter's brother, his son and his son's parents-in-law have lost money.
"You wonder how I feel about that? Would I have sold them to my nearest and dearest if I did not believe in the product?" Bangerter says.
So what went wrong? "If we had stuck to the product I invented, everyone would be happy," he says.
Bryers, he says, expanded the range of investment options available - "brilliant" concepts but only if the money was handled tightly, he says.
"In my opinion we should have had enough money in a contingency fund to cover the shortfall until the market came right again. The only reason we didn't was the money was taken away to use for other things."
Aitkenhead says they were always told investors' money was going into trust accounts and they had no reason to doubt it wasn't.
Bangerter describes Bryers as a "Walter Mitty" dreaming he would be "the richest Maori ever".
And he was full of promises. Bangerter and Aitkenhead say they bought their Remuera home, largely on finance, because they understood money they were owed would be paid. The money never came, they say.
Now Bangerter wants to be left to get on with a life after Blue Chip.
"I've got a clear conscience," he says. "I've done nothing that I wouldn't do again. For people to invest in real estate is the only way they are going to get a pension and I still believe that."
To that end he is working as a commission-only consultant selling property for a company that approached him - but this time the financial set up is very different.
If he has a guilty conscience, he says, it is over not being "tough enough" on Bryers. And what has he learned? "That you have to be mean, that you have to be careful and that's not my nature. I've learned that you don't live forever... I've learned that I'm foolish. And that people who really matter to you are ones that show trust even in the deepest darkest situation."
And if he is bankrupted? "I will pay everybody that I can that deserves it."
Mark Bryers did not return messages from the Herald on Sunday or reply to a list of emailed questions.
