Bankrupt traced to new jobs

A bankrupt builder who left a trail of debts in Queenstown appears to have been running a new construction business in Auckland.

Jaden Melgren’s Queenstownbased True Line Builders Ltd was put into voluntary liquidation in July 2017 and out-of-pocket creditors are still trying to claw back almost $800,000.

He shifted to Auckland and set up Melcon Ltd a week later. That company was removed from the Companies Register after four months. In July, Melgren was adjudged bankrupt in the Auckland District Court, excluding him from managing or controlling a business.

However, tradesmen say he appears to have been overseeing projects at several sites around Auckland, including a residential site on the North Shore last year. They say he had taken on another job recently but was unable to supply the staff he promised.

It is unclear what name he may be trading under but his wife Jackie Melgren is sole director and shareholder of Old School Carpentry Co set up in January 2018. Jackie Melgren was a shareholder in the failed True Line Builders Ltd, but was removed a day before the company went into liquidation.

Jaden and Jackie both say Jaden is not working. Jaden said the company was set up because ‘‘we might do something. We’re not doing anything at the moment’’.

At his Whangaparaoa home north of Auckland, Jaden wouldn’t disclose how much his company owed. ‘‘My company’s not the only company that’s gone into liquidation in the country, I don’t know why you’ve got a target on me.’’

In an earlier interview he said he had been making payments as prescribed under a Deed of Settlement by selling his gun collection and his ‘‘toys’’.

Jackie said she was supporting the family by working as the manager of a gift shop. ‘‘Jaden is devastated every day about what we’ve gone through. He hasn’t been able to go to work. He can’t.’’

In his most recent report on True Line Builders, liquidator Imran Kamal said he had concerns ‘‘regarding the manner in which the business was conducted and the substantial loss suffered by creditors’’. He told the Star-Times he would refer the case to the Companies Office enforcement unit.

He was still considering whether to take enforcement action in the High Court to recover tools taken and hidden by creditors in Queenstown.

When the Melgrens left Queenstown, documents abandoned in the Frankton office

included repossession notices on cars and a boat, a Statutory Demand from Inland Revenue for more than $150,000 and a letter from his accountants dated October 2016 telling Jaden Melgren the company was technically insolvent in March 2016.

Queenstown earthworks contractor Simon Hunt is owed $25,000 by True Line and is angry the Melgrens may be back in business. ‘‘The whole idea of bankruptcy is to stop the same sort of s... happening again. He’ll do it again, I guarantee it . . . He’ll just rip people off and do a runner. It’s diabolical.’’

Jaden Melgren disputes amount owed to Hunt.

The company owes seven preferential creditors and 22 unsecured creditors a total of $793,215. Kamal said it was too early to say how much of those debts would be met.

True Line Builders is not the first failed business Jaden Melgren has been linked to. Whitianga builder Nick Gill alleges Jaden Melgren left him with a debt of nearly $100,000 from a business in the Coromandel in 2006. Jaden Melgren denied the claim. the

* Additional reporting Matthew Rosenberg

‘‘He’ll do it again, I guarantee it . . . He’ll just rip people off and do a runner. It’s diabolical.’’ – Simon Hunt, left