At the third time of asking, aggrieved apartment owners at Viaduct Harbour on Auckland’s waterfront battling Pandey Group’s part-use of the building as a Sofitel Hotel have seen court-appointed administrators installed to review the body corporate’s financial position.
Apartment owners, many of them investors from Singapore and Malaysia, have faced off against Pandey Group for over a decade in multiple disputes over body corporate management of their complex on Viaduct Harbour Avenue.
They allege hotel costs are being improperly loaded into body corporate levies and that common areas supposedly available for use by all apartment owners have been wrongly usurped for hotel use only.
Aggrieved apartment owners hold a minority stake in the building’s body corporate.
Frustration at what they allege is Pandey Group’s strong-arm tactics to force them to integrate their apartments into Pandey’s Sofitel operations, they responded in 2023 by not putting up a candidate for appointment to the building’s body corporate committee.
They then refused to allow body corporate functions be delegated to the committee. This forced the Pandy-controlled committee to put all but minor administrative decisions to each and every apartment owner for their approval.
The High Court was told one consequence has been that the building’s long term maintenance fund has been run down; only $38,000 sits in a fund account which should hold some $915,000.
This deficiency arose, in part, because Viaduct ground rentals had been paid out of the maintenance fund and because some apartment owners had not paid body corporate levies, the court was told.
The Pandey-controlled body corporate has not chased defaulters for their unpaid levies.
Evidence was given that apartment owners allied to Pandey Group had levies totalling $604,000 unpaid; other apartment owners, $644,000.
The current body corporate committee has been suspended by the High Court.
Using powers in the Unit Titles Act, Justice O’Gorman appointed two partners from Deloitte as administrators, to take control of the body corporate’s bank accounts with power to exercise all powers held by the body corporate. They were given six months to report back on the body corporate’s financial position and its compliance with the Act.
The body corporate pays the cost of this investigation.
Een v. Body Corporate 384911 – High Court (6.09.24)
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