By Jeff Hampton
More trouble is brewing for embattled Christchurch property developer Dave Henderson, who has rapidly gone from riches to rags.
Companies linked to Henderson are the focus of a Serious Fraud Office investigation, over their borrowing from Allan Hubbard’s South Canterbury Finance.
Investigations into the failure of South Canterbury Finance is occupying much of SFO chief Adam Feeley's time – the more he looks, the wider the inquiry becomes.
And now his investigators are combing over transactions linked to Henderson; a colourful character who once had a MiG jet aeroplane seized over a debt, and whose financial affairs are never far from the headlines.
“There is an allegation that there may have been misrepresentations to South Canterbury and indeed Dominion Finance for funding,” says Mr Feeley. “The allegation is that but for those misrepresentations the funding wouldn't have been forthcoming.”
The problem is over funding for a Henderson Development called the Hotel SO, which now lies in the red zone right next door to the doomed Grand Chancellor Hotel.
The Henderson-linked property companies behind it borrowed from South Canterbury Finance and ended up owing it a cool $27 million.
As for the Hotel SO, it has since been sold for $19 million and renamed the All Seasons Hotel while Henderson has been bankrupted.
Mr Feeley says this type of investigation, involving property developers and finance companies, is mushrooming.
“We are pulling those apart bit by bit, but as we pull them apart we find more problems,” says the SFO chief.
As for Henderson, he says he has no idea what the SFO investigation is about. If history is anything to go by, it could take investigators some time to untangle what exactly has gone on with these loans.
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