A damning report into the company selling space camp trips to Nasa has revealed around $19 million debt and a director who transferred assets out of his hands shortly before the collapse.
The report into Actura Australia, the parent company of Actura New Zealand, lays out the bleak background toa business failure that has left around 400 Kiwi families up to $13,000 each out of pocket.
It is the latest development in the company’s implosion which has played out across five countries these last three months after years of selling to schoolchildren the dream of a two-week trip to Nasa in the United States.
For years, Actura New Zealand had pitched to schools across the country a “trip of a lifetime” to Nasa headquarters in Houston, Texas or for an ocean adventure on Great Barrier reef.
Its three New Zealand staff were selling trips right up to the point in mid-June when Australia-based founder Charles Chung emailed parents to say the 2024 and 2025 trips were cancelled and there was no money for refunds.
The first liquidation report for the Australian parent company is now out and alleged that Actura Australia had been insolvent since 2020.
It found that the company had suffered from high spending even though there was not enough money to pay debts and operate its business, “poor strategic management”, and transferring money to other companies in the group “to the detriment of… creditors”.
Liquidator Shumit Banerjee said it was his opinion that Actura Australia had “failed to maintain sufficient books and records” as required by law and those he had recovered “do not enable true and fair financial statements to be prepared and audited”.
Banerjee said there were “insufficient source documents to confirm the accuracy of transactions” in the company accounts. Likewise, the company’s asset register also lacked necessary detail.
His report included a helicopter-view of assets and liabilities with the assessment the company owed around $19m.
Parents who paid to send their children to a Nasa space camp in Houston have been left stranded after Actura went bankrupt.
Among the assets was $1.74m of money owed - although Banerjee said $1.4m of that was owed by other companies in the group. That included $1.1m owed by the New Zealand company which, he said, was unlikely to be paid as it was also in liquidation.
For the “space school” trips, about $2.4m had been paid to travel and accommodation providers but little of it was recoverable, he said. The hotels contacted did not have refund policies for the bookings. The 14 airlines across which flights had been booked were able to make refunds to Actura Australia’s booking agents but it was unclear how much - if anything - would come back to the company.
Payments for the “ocean adventure” to Great Barrier reefs were effectively lost with no refund policy, he said.
Banerjee’s report listed a string of laws he said that “may” have been broken including:
Trading while insolvent which appeared to be as early as July 2020;
Failing to act in good faith;
Misleading and deceptive conduct;
Getting into “uncommercial” or “unreasonable” director-related transactions;
Taking bookings when it should have known it couldn’t provide the trips.
While identifying offences might not recoup additional money, he said records so far suggested a “maximum potential claim” of $8m against Chung for insolvent trading.
Banerjee’s inquiries also revealed that Chung had transferred shareholdings and other wealth to his wife’s name nine days before the company went into liquidation. He said Chung had also sold his home - which was mortgaged and facing three caveats - for $3.8m with a settlement date in October.
The report showed the company was based in the Seychelles, a tax haven in the Indian Ocean. It also operated branches in Singapore and Taiwan, along with the New Zealand arm.
The operational branches in Singapore and Taiwan had also ceased trading, as had a related company - Oneteam Travel Pty Ltd - which was set up to manage flights and accommodation.
The report revealed there had been moves in New Zealand to go after the money owed with two parents among the hundreds left short buying its shares.
The report also included Chung’s account of the company’s pathway to liquidation, starting with its launch in 2015 and strong growth until February 2020 when Covid-19 choked travel across the planet.
He said the two years that followed saw it unable to make any booking and stacking up a debt of $5.5m in refunds that needed to be made. Then, over 2022 and 2023, about A$4.9m of that was repaid as people started booking trips again.
Even as 2023 improved, with 1200 students booked for trips, the economic tightening of this year saw a “significant decline”.
Castor Bay residents Deb Lawson, 49, and her son James, 15, are among more than 270 New Zealand parents affected by the collapse of Actura New Zealand. Photo / Supplied
A move to installment payments appeared to lead to a pick up in registrations but had less money coming into the company to meet costs, including debt.
Chung told the liquidators when it was realised it could not solve its own money issues, he began searching for an investor while remortgaging his home to put another $1.4m into the business (which now owed him $7.2m). A further $197,000 was also borrowed.
He claimed a deal signed in May 2024 with a private equity group would open a new cash pipeline but the money never came.
An ultimatum was then issued - provide money he said was contractually promised by June 14 or the booked trips would be cancelled and the company put into liquidation.
The New Zealand company also collapsed with its shares bought by two of the roughly 400 families registered with the liquidator as out of pocket. The move gave the shareholders the legal power to compel the liquidator to pursue the $3m owed here across the Tasman.
Deb Lawson, who has been leading efforts to organise the families, said hundreds of people had been left with more than $10,000 owed for what was to be the trip of a lifetime.
“It breaks my heart to see how many are out of pocket and powerless.”
She said there had been a report to the Serious Fraud Office and a determination among families to pursue Chung as more stories emerged from those affected over the way the company had behaved.
“This awful man, this awful company, had issued itineraries for flights to leave in two weeks - but there were no flight bookings or accommodation.
“I do find a lot of comfort knowing he is likely to face prosecution. The primary objective for most is to see he is held to account.”
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.
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