Trade bogey for directors
Torquay resort company in liquidation
A COMPANY suspected of trading while insolvent during its operation of a prominent Torquay resort and golf club has been placed into liquidation.
Creditors voted to wind up the company that ran Peppers the Sands Resort, ASIC documents reveal.
News Corp last week revealed the resort — recently bought by investment banker Jack Dahan for $12.8m — had been the subject of a legal stoush over ownership and owed finances.
Walden Cloud Group — a company with Chinese links and directed by Jun Zhou, Guoxin Zhou and Yang Sun — bought the 76ha resort for about $23m in 2017.
Creditors of the company, under administration, voted that the company be wound up during the week.
They also resolved that administrators Paul Anthony Allen and Jason Glenn Stone, of PKF Melbourne, be appointed liquidators.
Staff are among about 300 creditors owed money by the company, which was also paid by the Victorian Government for hotel quarantine, despite never housing a single returned traveller.
The company owed employees $845,396, unsecured creditors more than $2.1m and statutory creditors more than $1.7m.
Administrators found the company owed more than $1.5m to the tax office, $229,815 to Barwon Water, $127,000 to Surf Coast Shire Council and had not made a superannuation payment since October 2019.
It had been “put on notice’’ by its secured creditor in October 2018 “that it believed the company was insolvent’’.
“It is the administrator’s view that is likely the company traded while insolvent since at least October 2018 and an insolvent trading claim may be made against the directors for debts incurred after that date,’’ administrators said.
“However, further investigations are required.’’
An attempted sale of the resort, with an 18-hole golf course designed by PGA Tour winner Stuart Appleby, 112room hotel and conference centre for $14.5m fell through late last year.