Love’s house under negotiation
A gated beachfront home at the centre of the illegal payment which brought down Sir Nga¯tata Love has failed to sell at auction.
The Wellington house went under the hammer as part of a bid to recover money for Love’s victims.
The top offer for the Plimmerton property was from a mystery phone bidder whose final bid of $1.435 million did not meet reserve. The bid is now being put before the official assignee to consider, which could take a couple of days.
At the auction in Harcourts Paraparaumu office yesterday, it was revealed the house has water damage. There was no mention of Love’s connection to it.
The auction room was full, with four bidders vying to get their hands on Love’s house. The bidding started at $700,000.
Harcourts listed 12 Moana Rd in Plimmerton for sale last month, marketing it as a ‘‘charming, executive home’’.
It has a rateable value of $1.87m. Love and his former partner Lorraine Skiffington, who died earlier this year, paid $1.8m for it in 2006.
Love was jailed in late 2016 after a High Court trial found him guilty of obtaining by deception funds which rightly belonged to the Wellington Tenths Trust, at a time when he was chair of the Ma¯ori trust, and one of the most powerful figures in Ma¯oridom.
The hearing went ahead after years of legal wrangling, culminating in a process to determine whether Love, who was suffering from dementia, should stand trial.
Love was released from jail around the time of his 80th birthday in September, after the parole board found he posed little risk because of his age and illness, although it prohibited him from having contact with the organisations he used to run without the permission of his parole officer.
Skiffington, who was granted a stay of prosecution on account of her ill-health, died in September, aged 59.
Her death came several months after the High Court ordered the couple’s for- mer home sold, in the face of mounting arrears on the house.
According to the July court order, the mortgage on the property was around $1m, with arrears of about $96,000.
In 2014, police were granted a restraining order on the property, as prosecutors were struggling to get Love to face trial.
Assuming the house is sold, Westpac will be repaid the money it is owed, with the balance held by the Official Assignee, pending court proceedings to determine whether the remainder should be paid to Love’s victims.