Manager says inn owes $7000

CONCERNED: Alan Wilkinson, store manager for Moore Wilson's Masterton, says the store is owed $7000. PHOTO/LYNDA FERINGA

Police are still investigating whether criminal offences ocurred in Eketahuna Inn's business transactions under the management of Laura Aldworth.

Moore Wilson's Masterton store manager Alan Wilkinson said Mrs Aldworth owed them $7000 and he wanted to go public with his business dealings with her to "get the awareness out there of this woman's history in case she pops up again".

He said Mrs Aldworth had a charge account with Moore Wilson's and had agreed for her purchases to be direct debited from her ANZ bank account each week.

"Within a few days of lodging that form, she had changed her bank account which ensured that there could be no payment made," Mr Wilkinson said.

"But before we got notification for the default of the payment, she had come in that weekend and clocked up about $5000 worth of goods, I would say, full well knowing that by Monday or Tuesday we would get the notification of default from the bank, and at which stage we froze the account.

"In contacting her, she indicated to me that we had been paid, which is just not true.

"From that point on she wouldn't return my calls, or when I did get through to the inn, a staff member would tell me that she was too busy to take the phone or she wasn't available at that time."

Mr Wilkinson said after this incident he contacted solicitors who put a statutory demand on her as director of Eketahuna Inn, "which gave her 15 days to pay or come to an arrangement with us".

"I'm not a lawyer but it was interesting that the purchases she made from here were prior to the incorporation date of her company. Whether that's got any bearing as to whether she is personally liable for the owed money or the company is, I don't know."

Mrs Aldworth's company The Eketahuna Inn Family Restaurant and Bar Limited was registered through New Zealand's Company Office on September 11 this year. In a credit account application filled out with Masterton-based company Waiwhetu Distributors, Mrs Aldworth indicated the company was incorporated on August 20. Waiwhetu Distributors were owed $5000 for cleaning products and equipment but retrieved $3000 worth of stock from the inn last Tuesday.