Maori firm's debt settled

16th March 2010

A company set up to save troubled Far North Maori group Matauri X from financial ruin has staved off an attempt to put it into liquidation, agreeing to pay an outstanding debt.

A $150,000 debt to United Civil Construction was behind the application to liquidate Matauri Bay Properties, which was due to be heard in the Civil Court at Whangarei yesterday.

But when the matter was called before Associate Judge David Abbott it was discontinued as the two parties had come to an agreement over repaying the debt.

Maori landowners were forced to subdivide some of their 500 hectares of land at Matauri Bay, in the Far North, after a failed business venture left their Matauri X Corporation $6 million in debt. That debt has now soared to between $18 million and $20 million.

The group set up Matauri Bay Developments Ltd to sell the two stages of the subdivision - stage one with 81 sections and stage two with 58. Only 10 of the sections are believed to have sold.

United Civil Construction had applied to the court to put Matauri Developments into liquidation over a $149,506.39 debt owed for work the company carried out on the subdivision.

The investment disaster took place after Matauri X, led by then-chairman Hemi Rua Rapata, borrowed money from Bridgecorp and Instant Funding to invest in the Eternal Waters mineral water company in 2001.

Labour list MP and former Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels is the largest single shareholder of Matauri X.

Mr Samuels is defying a court order to pay $40,000 to the financially-troubled incorporation.

In 2008, Mr Samuels lost a legal fight in the Maori Land Court to try to stop part of land he claimed had special significance to his whanau from being included in the subdivision.