Du Val founder faces his last rodeo

Opinion: It was February 9 of this year that Newsroom revealed work had stopped on a big Du Val apartment project in Auckland as contractors threatened legal action.
We had visited the Verge site in Mt Wellington. Scaffolders who said they hadn’t been paid were removing their gear. The site was otherwise empty and unsecured. The open door of the site office swung in the breeze.
Du Val Group director Kenyon Clarke, who owns the company with wife Charlotte, denied the company owed money: “The representation is utter nonsense and non factual,” he wrote to us, in a LinkedIn message.
Over the next couple of days, it emerged that investors and staff, too, felt they’d been burnt. We were told of one woman who’d put in up to $1.2 million – all the proceeds from selling her house. Lawyers for both subbies and investors issued statutory demands for payment, under threat of liquidation action. In the end, the Financial Markets Authority stepped in.
Police raided the Clarkes’ Remuera home and the Du Val Group was placed into receivership in August .
Then, on the strengths of concerns raised by the receivers’ first report, the Government put the Du Val Group, its related companies and their subsidiaries, into statutory management – a rare and extraordinary step reserved for companies whose debts look large and complex and irretrievable.
On Thursday this week the statutory managers – John Fisk and his team at PwC – issued their receivers’ report on the direction of the High Court. There were some parts redacted, but the bulk of the report is enough to make for disturbing reading.
Bear in mind, this isn’t Kenyon Clarke’s first rodeo. He was declared bankrupt in 2009 after companies that built studio apartments in Hamilton, under the control of Kenyon and his mother Jenepher, were placed in receivership, owing an estimated $50m. 
This time round, Fisk has put the financial shortfall in Du Val Group as high as $250m
When I talk about rodeos, I don’t want to suggest Clarke’s a cowboy. But certainly he’s enjoyed showing his wealth, which is galling for those left out of pocket. Back in Hamilton in the day, he drove a Ferrari; more recently he’s been driven in a Rolls-Royce Phantom with the licence plate ‘Du Val’.
“I lost it all, and had to start right again from my beginnings,” he says in the video teaser for a self-funded reality TV show.
This was meant to be the breakthrough year for the glamour couple. Their show ‘The Property Developers’ promised a unique perspective into the journey of building a billion dollar property and lifestyle business, through the eyes of a charismatic entrepreneur and a woman taking on a male-dominated industry.
“This is not your typical reality show,” the blurb says. “We see how this dynamic power couple merge family life and business together seamlessly, giving viewers an all-access pass to the highs and lows of entrepreneurship.”
Shots of the yacht, the jet, the helicopter, the Rolls-Royce, cut to Kenyon Clarke at home in Fiji, in front of Prada and Yves St Laurent coffee table books. 
Now, the court has ordered the statutory managers to pay the couple $3000 a week in allowances to sustain their lifestyle.
So where did all their money come from? The receivers’ report says: “The personal affairs of Mr and Mrs Clarke … have been closely intertwined with the affairs of the Du Val Group, including in respect of funds flows via the extensive related party transactions and personal expenditure.”
Du Val Group’s portfolio and facilities management activities were operated through a company called Investment Portfolio Management Ltd Partnership, which included on its payroll Kenyon and Charlotte Clarke’s house manager, nanny and cleaner.
The report highlights “irregular accounting” and “questionable asset values” in the highly complex and interconnected group of companies and trusts, that it says need further investigation. A trust run by the Clarkes is also being investigated, after the receivers discovered it had sold intellectual property that it valued at $15m to Du Val Group, creating an unexplained debt.
As he did in February, Kenyon Clarke has continued to insist the business is solvent. But as statutory managers, Fisk and his team say they’re working to seek positive outcomes for those who have been impacted. 
They’re continuing construction work on two of the three development sites, with settlement of pre-sale contracts occurring as units are completed. At the third site, on which only civil works had commenced, proposals for ongoing works are under consideration in consultation with the secured funder.
Back in February, Kenyon Clarke gleefully warned on his much-loved Instagram that he would sue media that said the company was insolvent. 
Now, he’s pulled down his Insta, Facebook and LinkedIn social accounts. As someone who lived and breathed his loud social profile, it’s perhaps the most overt sign he could give that this, possibly last, rodeo is over.