Fraud police probe bankrupt's $12 million health resort project

Friday 17th August 2001

HARRY HOLT: Police want a chat

By Jock Anderson

A police fraud investigation into the collapse of the planned $12 million Phoenician health resort on the shores of Lake Karapiro is likely to become a Serious Fraud Office probe.

Involved is a colourful double-bankrupt and his family, a struck-off jailed lawyer, law firms, accountants, dubious valuations, a "Cayman Islands" rescue bid and dozens of out-of-pocket investors and trade creditors.

Cambridge detective Simon Eckersley said yesterday he was investigating three separate complaints by investors and creditors alleging fraud relating to the Phoenician project and other Holt-related ventures.

Detective Eckersley said some of the investor complaints related to assurances allegedly made that they were secured creditors in the lavishly promoted Phoenician project.

At the centre of the investigation are husband and wife Henry Peter (Harry) Holt and Christine Mary Holt, whose Phoenician Management company was wound up in the Hamilton High Court last Friday with debts said to be more than $3 million.

At a High Court hearing in May investors' lawyer David Wood told Justice Priestley that Phoenician Management was "committing acts of insolvency all the time."

Mr Holt was adjudged bankrupt in February. He was previously adjudged bankrupt in 1992 when his address was the Sanctuary Cove luxury resort in Surfers' Paradise.

The Holts' Phoenician resort plan promised sumptuous accommodation and facilities to clients and guaranteed returns to investors, but delivered only a handful of decaying, unfinished cabins that failed to meet council building rules (NBR, June 8).

Mr Holt was sole director of Phoenician Management until his wife replaced him as sole director after his latest bankruptcy.

A former shareholder in Phoenician Management who has played a major role in the project is Murray Athol Osmond, a former Cambridge lawyer struck off and jailed for stealing clients' money from his father's law firm.

Mr Osmond was linked to an alleged Cayman Islands rescue bid for the Phoenician project said to be worth about $3.7 million.

Liquidator Steve Lawrence, of Ferrier Hodgson, who said he had not been able to track down Mr and Mrs Holt this week, said he expected to have a clearer picture of Phoenician Management's financial state next week.

Possibly complicating matters are a couple of debenture securities registered over Phoenician Management on July 26 by Cambridge lawyer Ray Harris and Angela Mary Wilson (Mr and Mrs Holt's daughter) and Sharan Holdings, a company formed last December, of which Ms Wilson, who gave a Melbourne address, is sole director and shareholder. Ms Wilson also recently became a shareholder in Phoenician Management.

Mr Harris, a shareholder in Phoenician Management, and his law firm have been intimately involved in some of Phoenician and related companies' financial affairs.

Some creditors continue to question the actions of Cambridge chartered accountant Brian Jonasson and Cambridge company director Tony Gainsford as trustees of a second mortgage over the Phoenician property at Karapiro.

Legal action has already started against Messrs Jonasson and Gainsford and more is contemplated by investors.

Questions also surround the accuracy of a list presented to the High Court purporting to be of financial settlements and showing $3.3 million allegedly due on 26 self-contained Phoenician resort units, most of which have yet to be built.

Some of those alleged settlements were known to have been cancelled by disgruntled investors, one related to a liquidated company owned by Mrs Holt, some agreements were never signed and two related to a company that appears not to exist.

Other Holt-related companies, including Parkway Construction and Nighthawk Developments, were wound up a year ago, with Master John Faire accusing Parkway Construction of running fast and loose with its creditors. Another Holt-related company, Parkway Investments, is also under pressure from creditors.

Meanwhile, a Morrinsville man whose $30,000 payment for an old house for removal from the Phoenician site may have been used to pay lawyers' bills said he was still hoping to get the property, despite action by mortgagee Dorchester Finance.

Neither Mr nor Mrs Holt could be located for comment. Their lawyer, Alan Hassall QC, and Mr Osmond also did not return The National Business Review's calls.

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