A controversial wealthy Russian businessman who formerly resided in New Zealand has died in Russia, reportedly of Covid.
Jared Booth, a liquidator for Staples Rodway, confirmed to the New Zealand Herald the company had been advised of Mikhail Khimich's death.
Khimich first arrived in New Zealand as a billionaire in 2008, but left behind a trail of failed ventures and an aborted drink-driving trial.
Newsroom reported that he died in Russia where he contracted Covid-19.
The businessman received significant publicity in 2010 and 2013 when he bought Waiwera Water, the bottling company, and Waiwera Thermal Resort, the water park on the northern outskirts of Auckland.
He planned to undertake a large refurbishment of the thermal pools, but it never happened. The two companies fell over and were placed into liquidation.
Following the marketing for sale of a 10ha farm block owned by Waiwera Water in 2014, media attention began to focus on the state of his empire.
The farm site, 6km inland from Waiwera, was at first earmarked for a bottling plant to boost production and take Waiwera Water to new global markets.
When local opposition grew to a bottling operation in a rural area, plans morphed into a niche organic winery and distillery, where medicinal wine could be sampled in tasting rooms alongside organic vodka, gin and rum produced under Khimich's Waiwera Spirits label.
However, four years later only grass was growing on the land and by 2014 the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) has ordered that it be sold.
Khimich was deemed bankrupt by the High Court at Wellington in 2019.
The first liquidators' report on Waiwera Group had a schedule of creditors listing IRD in Wellington, Auckland commercial barrister David L Marriott, Auckland law firm Hudson Gavin Martin, logistics company Chempro and Khimich who owned the business.
Kiwibank was owed $1.2 million but had a first-ranking general security agreement, the liquidators said in 2019.
Waiwera Group, associated with the liquidated company, had also claimed $2.1m and has a second-ranking agreement. Inland Revenue was owed $584,000.
How it started
Khimich's journey to Waiwera famously began at Kermadec restaurant on Auckland's waterfront back in 2008 where he sampled Waiwera Artesian Water for the first time.
When he returned the next day, they had run out due to supply problems. He despatched a marine industry acquaintance, Alex Kirichuk, to Waiwera with a proposition.
An investor of Khimich's means, touting potential access to Eastern European markets, held obvious appeal for John Brown, the tourism entrepreneur who made his name with the Mt Hutt Skifield and Victoria Park Markets in the 1980s.
He'd bought the popular Waiwera thermal pools in 1989, upgraded the place and revived the bottled water operation within the site. Waiwera Artesian Water was relaunched with an award-winning bottle design and marketing which emphasised the age of the water (carbon dated to 15,000 years) and the town's mineral spa heritage.
Brown also expanded his landholdings but several ambitious schemes to make Waiwera an international resort came and went.
One venture - a hotel, spa, apartments and conference centre - fell over when developers McEwan Group collapsed, forcing him to sell down his holdings, including the land beneath the hotpools.
Khimich with Belarusian ex-model girlfriend Maria Dzidirava in 2012. Photo / supplied
Khimich first took a 60 per cent stake in Waiwera Water and the hotpools before gaining full control. He kept Brown on as a consultant adviser for a time before serving him a trespass notice.
The notice was withdrawn and Khimich entered a sale and purchase agreement to buy the nearby Waiwera Holiday Park off Brown, conditional on OIO approval.
Khimich hoped the planned 5-star resort would be a catalyst for a "master plan" redevelopment putting Waiwera on the international spa resort map, the application documents state.
But after finally gaining OIO clearance, he pulled out while the approval was with government ministers for sign-off.
The land was then sold in a mortgagee sale and Brown threatened filing a lawsuit at the time.
Now, the once-popular Waiwera Thermal Resort has been left in a decrepit state following an abrupt closure.
It was shut in 2018 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.
Waiwera Thermal Resort. Photo / Anne Gibson
By October that year the landowners, Waiwera Properties Limited (WPL), had cancelled the lease and changed the locks on the doors at Waiwera Thermal Resort after a history of default payments.
Khimich's company purchased the leasehold interest in the property in 2010.
WPL project director Evan Vertue said he did not welcome the move but the company was left with no other option but to cancel the lease.
"We have reluctantly re-entered the premises due to continual tenant default and consider this option a last resort."
Vertue said then that the defaults dated back as far as two years, and it remained unclear as to why the bills had not been paid.
Late last year footage of the abandoned Waiwera Thermal Resort emerged on social media showing debris, rubbish and junk sitting amid empty abandoned pools and smashed windows.
Ex-business partner
Former business partner, Alex Kirichuk, was forthcoming with the Herald in 2014 about his difficulties with Khimich.
"He is Russian, I am Ukrainian. We were friends, now we are at war," he said at the time.
Kirichuk was a co-director in several Khimich entities but worked mainly on the organic winery and spirits ventures. But in May 2013 he and his small team were ordered from the premises and police were called when he tried to return.
He was also sacked as a director. But by year's end the pair had patched up their differences and Kirichuk was reinstated as a director in February. Two months later, he resigned.
Kirichuk claimed he was owed wages and equipment and that some trade marks on the spirits are his.
Mikhail Khimich. Photo / File
He also claimed Khimich reneged on an agreement to transfer a 25.1 per cent shareholding in the Waiwera Organic Winery; Khimich argued the agreement was void because the winery never eventuated.
Khimich told the Herald then that it was a private commercial matter.
In 2020, drink-driving charges against a former Russian oil mogul were dismissed after his bizarre and nearly four-years-long case dragged on and continued "costing the taxpayer money".
He had faced one charge of refusing to undergo a blood specimen test, despite being required to do so, and also faced a charge of failing to supply identifying particulars, namely a photograph and fingerprints, while in police custody following his arrest.
It was also not the first time Khimich has had such criminal allegations thrown out of court, as he refused to return to New Zealand from Moscow due to medical fears.
In 2014 he had another drink-driving charge dropped after his arrest was lost in translation.
Khimich blew nearly one and a half times over the limit when his Porsche was stopped for speeding on the Auckland Harbour Bridge, court papers revealed.
But Judge Pippa Sinclair threw out the case after ruling police had failed to inform Khimich of his rights because of language difficulties.
Khimich's history
The former Moscow-based tycoon had been a top executive and part-owner of Russian oil company Naftasib.
He gained New Zealand residency in 2013 and has been a generous benefactor to several sports and horse racing since first arriving in New Zealand in 2008.
As well as this, Khimich courted publicity for events such as the February 2012 launch of his premium vodka range at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron.
It was Khimich to the rescue when Team New Zealand ran into a cashflow crisis after the America's Cup defeat in San Francisco.
He even enjoyed a private audience with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at the Avantidrome opening in (our) Cambridge, the Herald on Sunday later reported. Khimich pledged a reported $1m to the $28m velodrome, where Waiwera Water was a gold sponsor.
