Banned agent breaks silence
Morals and business don’t mix, says Aaron Drever, who reckons everyone’s out to get him. Steve Kilgallon reports.
‘‘I could say I’ve got Jesus, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus all on my team,’’ says banned real estate agent Aaron Drever, reflecting on his latest woes.
‘‘The moment they hear my name, it’s ‘f ...... Aaron Drever, he’s a crook’. So that reality is why I choose to say nothing.’’ Drever has broken that silence to speak for the first time on why he ‘‘flipped’’ a West Auckland bowling green for a near $500,000 profit on the same day, admitting the deal was ‘‘morally a bit s...’’, but saying he did nothing wrong. Drever, who has three years left to serve on his real estate licence suspension, says he was acting as a ‘‘private speculator’’ when he negotiated a deal that saw the Avondale Bowling Club sell one of its greens for $300,000 to a company owned by Drever’s aunt, which on-sold it the same day to a property investor for $870,000. ‘‘Was this transaction illegal?’’ Drever said. ‘‘No it wasn’t, everyone knew about it. Was it morally not right? Well, whose morals? You and I both know morals and business aren’t two things that are hand in glove.’’
Drever said he regretted the deal because of the media attention.
‘‘Would I do the transaction again? I don’t know. Maybe if I didn’t have journalists following me around, probably I wouldn’t.
‘‘The media hate me, mate. All this does is create another media saga and people who don’t know me will get on Facebook and hate me. I’ve got enough problems in my life.’’
Those problems are around Drever’s commercial ventures, and to a lesser degree, his career as a well-known speedway commentator, with one speedway track threatening to trespass him because of his reputation.
Drever says he’s lost up to $2 million on the liquidation of two grocery businesses which he claims were sold to him with inflated balance sheets. His Mt Eden gourmet supermarket, The Grocer’s Market, is in receivership with substantial debts and is to be sold to rival chain Farro.
Drever claims he has paid all staff owed wages and sold a rental property to cover the expense.
Property records show companies associated with Drever sold a house in Ambler Ave, Glen Eden, last December, although that’s before The Grocer’s Market hit trouble.
Having originally promised to sell his house if he had to honour debts, Drever confirmed his own detached home in Glendene was now held in a family trust.
The Sunday Star-Times spoke to several staff who said they were owed money. One senior staff member said he was still seeking wages from Drever and knew of several others in the same situation.
Another staff member said he was owed $2000 in holiday and lieu pay. He said: ‘‘We don’t know what’s happening. We worked right through Christmas and New Year up to the doors closing, we’ve had no
Aaron doesn’t think the rules apply to him. Paloma Cheadle, creditor
holiday pay or redundancy pay. They said their first priority was the staff before the creditors but we don’t think we’re going to get that money.’’
Paloma Cheadle, who contracted as a marketing consultant, said her invoice for $3083 remained unpaid.
‘‘I got no responses from my emails [asking for payments],’’ she said. ‘‘I’m 100 per cent certain I won’t get the money back. Aaron doesn’t think the rules apply to him.’’
Confusingly, the Grocer’s Market operated as two companies, both of which are in receivership – TGM Trading Ltd and Old Auckland Grocer’s Market Ltd.
Damien Grant, receiver for TGM Trading, said staff were owed holiday payments in the region of $14,000 to $25,000. ‘‘If he has sold rental property, he hasn’t given money to me in order to pay the staff. I am not aware he has paid them; that’s not to say he hasn’t paid them some money directly.’’
Grant’s first liquidators report for TGM Trading says no PAYE and GST were paid to Inland Revenue and it’s possible rent arrears are also owed.
McDonald Vague are receivers for Old Auckland Grocer’s Market and have given creditors until April 30 to lodge claims. Among listed creditors are Mt Eden Foods, the holding company Drever purchased the business from, suggesting he hasn’t paid all he owed for the purchase. McDonald Vague would distribute any money left from the sale to Farro after preferential creditors are paid, and would also consider any action they could take against Drever himself.
Drever claims he lost around $1.5m on The Grocer’s Market and another $300,000 when he liquidated a Pt Chevalier branch of the Mad Butcher owned by his late father, Carl, but in which he had invested capital.
‘‘The sad part is I have lost my commercial reputation, and you don’t get that back,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s an unpleasant situation. Put yourself in my shoes: I stand to lose about a million bucks.
‘‘I went into that [The Grocer’s Market] with blinkers on. Nobody in their right mind would go into a business saying ‘I’m going to make this fail’. Who would do that? Not even me. I tried my best. I actually genuinely believed that was going to work.’’
Drever said he’d been shown balance sheets for the old Nosh supermarket which was on the Mt Eden site before The Grocer’s Market that showed it turning over $200,000 a week. ‘‘It was less than half that,’’ Drever said.
Grant, who was also receiver for the Nosh store and negotiated the sale to Drever, said the store had been turning over roughly $5m a year at its peak, or about $100,000 a week. ‘‘That was provided in the memorandum of information and Mr Drever would have had a copy of that.’’
Drever described the bowling green sale as a ‘‘band-aid’’ to rescue a club that had asked him for help when in financial trouble. He said it was a ‘‘perfectly legitimate transaction: it’s how real estate works’’.
‘‘I’ve been singled out because it is me. Absolutely.’’
Drever said he was motivated to help the bowling club, not to make money.
‘‘If I sold my car for ten grand because I needed some money in a hurry, and you bought it and sold it for $20,000, the same principle applies: it’s time and place.’’
He said an (unpaid) invoice he presented to the bowling club for $17,250 had been ‘‘misconstrued’’ and was not commission on the sale but for three months’ financial consultancy work.
Drever is widely known as a speedway commentator, and even during his present troubles has been calling meetings at Western Springs and Baypark race tracks.
But Frank Irvine, president of Waikaraka Family Speedway, said he would be moving a motion tomorrow night to trespass Drever from the racetrack because he was ‘‘undesirable, no good for the sport’’.
Irvine said Drever was a former committee member there but ‘‘didn’t leave on good terms’’ and he found it ‘‘unbelievable’’ he continued to call races elsewhere.
Drever won real estate sales awards for selling millions of dollars of West Auckland property but the Real Estate Agents Authority cancelled his licence in 2016. It said he was ‘‘unable or unwilling’’ to change and ‘‘the public needs to [be] protected from him’’ after his ninth finding of misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct. He’s barred from the industry until 2021.