Creditors flag list of new companies
ALARMED creditors and clients of collapsed Gold Coast builder QNV Constructions have contacted the Australian Phoenix Taskforce and corporate watchdog after the group’s director registered eight new companies.
Seven QNV companies, which were owned by disgraced developer Craig Gore before they were bought out by a billionaire British lord in 2008, went into administration yesterday.
Debts of the group are likely
to be well over $3 million, with subbies out of pocket and home buyers in three states facing unfinished or defective projects.
Company records show the sole director of the collapsed QNV companies, Christopher Eaton, registered a new company, QNV Group Holdings, which is not in external administration, in March, along with three other companies: Aevum Homes Services; Aevum Homes 1; and Capitale Del Famiglia.
Mr Eaton registered Aevum Homes, Aevum Property Group Holdings and Aevum Homes Realty in February; Capitale Del Rei in January; and Aevum Property Group on June 11. None of the new entities appear to hold building licences in Australia's eastern states.
Mr Eaton could not be contacted and there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by him.
ASIC did not answer questions about whether it was investigating the new companies.
QNV’s collapsed companies were bought from disgraced developer Craig Gore by Mayfair Limited, an entity based in the Caribbean tax haven of Belize in Central America and controlled by billionaire British lord Michael Ashcroft.
Early estimates by the administrator have found $2.5 million owed to unsecured creditors including subcontractors, and that staff wages and other entitlements were also outstanding. There is also likely to be a substantial tax debt, and a high number of home buyers in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria have been affected.
The administration was triggered by an offshore company, Nova Global Overseas Ltd, which the administrator said was related to QNV’s ultimate owner and had loaned an unknown amount to QNV in December, secured against the companies.
QNV Constructions’ Queensland building licence was suspended by the QBCC in January and cancelled in July, with its NSW licence cancelled in May.
The QBCC said it was seeking to ban those responsible for QNV from the state’s building industry for three years.