The expensive car of bankrupt Bridgecorp executive director Rod Petricevic is to be sold, a court ordered today.
The 2005 Porsche, estimated to be worth between $120,000 and $150,000, has been at the centre of a legal row after most of the Bridgecorp companies were placed in receivership in July last year, owing debenture holders $460 million.
Three days later ownership of the car was transferred to the Petricevic Family Trust, but earlier this year it was seized by bailiffs and has been in storage.
Today Judge John Hansen ordered the car to be sold after telling lawyers for the family trust, the receivers and the official assignee, it should have been sorted out before it got to court.
The hearing in the High Court at Auckland was over an application by the receiver for a preservation order which would mean the court would continue to hold the car and it would not to go back to the family trust.
However, lawyers for all three parties said today it was in the best interests of all that the car be sold now because the economy was weakening and the car was probably losing value.
Judge Hansen told the lawyers he would adjourn to give them time to sort it out.
"It should be resolved in five or 10 minutes," he said.
About 40 minutes later the lawyers returned to court and said they had agreed that the car should be groomed, given a new warrant of fitness and sold.
Details of how the car was to be sold were suppressed until after the sale and the proceeds of the sale were to go into an interest-bearing court bank account until a further court hearing decided if the receiver or the family trust should get the proceeds.
