Who is NZ’s mysterious fee-gouging, fraud-convicted shadow liquidator?
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
With company liquidations at a 15-year high, Leighton Associates expanded its scope of research to include insolvency law from the start of 2026. Contributions of several talented guest bloggers from the insolvency profession are in the links below:
Inland Revenue has increased its role in applying for liquidation often in circumstances where the company has long been unable to meet its PAYE and GST payment obligations. An added hazard to business owners is Section 142W of the Employment Relations Act, which allows employees to recover outstanding wages and holiday pay from (usually) directors personally, and this is where insolvency law and employment law often overlaps.
Harsh as it is, these are just some of the risks business owners are deemed to have accepted when going out on their own and/or taking on employees.
But there is a matter currently before the Employment Court that goes beyond the pale. Two liquidators - one unlicensed (having been refused membership by RITANZ on character grounds) and his licensed proxy, tried to stitch up the director of a failed security company in order to gouge a settlement in relation to an overdrawn shareholder account (a feature of most liquidations) to maximise fees, but went too far.
On 26 July 2024, two things happened.
The Employment Relations Authority, relying heavily on liquidators’ financial accounts since alleged to have been faked, ordered the director of Prime Focus Security Ltd (in liquidation), Mr Menzies, to pay more than $32,000 to the company in liquidation so that the liquidator could in turn pay that money to a former employee who had raised a grievance. Costs were later added, and currently the director owes more than $50,000. Currently, all of that is being challenged in the Employment Court.
On the same day, the proxy liquidator was stripped of her licence by the NZICA Disciplinary Tribunal, for her “complete dereliction of duty” in that she was fronting for a convicted fraudster without supervising him. To read the Tribunal’s determination, go to www.charteredaccountantsanz.com and type “Nayacakalou” in the search bar. It says:
“The fact that she contracted out the engagement to an unlicensed insolvency practitioner whose application to become licensed had been declined for grounds that he was not a fit and proper person to hold a licence are aggravating”, and refers to:
“... her nominal fee of $5,000 per liquidation when the unlicensed insolvency practitioner and his business charged fees of over $100,000 for some liquidations”, and
“Ms Nayacakalou permitted [him] and his team to charge excessive fees...”
There was an interim non-publication order that lapsed on 1 October 2024, and BusinessDesk and NBR published the following day. Kelera Nayacakalou was also ordered to pay approximately $40,000 towards the Tribunal’s costs.
Her problems didn’t end there. Mr Gillovic, the director of two companies that were placed in liquidation in 2015 applied to the High Court to have her removed as liquidator, unaware that she was soon to be struck off for other reasons.
Downward spiral
By the time the High Court had made its decision to replace Ms Nayacakalou with another liquidator, she had already been stripped of her licence, but the judgment does not refer to this so it’s likely that the Court didn’t know. The NZICA Disciplinary Tribunal’s interim non-publication order would not lapse for another month.
The Court also reduced her fees to $7,000+GST, about one-tenth of what she was trying to charge. And a separate costs order was made against her, for $22,679 payable to Mr Gillovic.
The Gillovic matter was a great example of fee gouging by Ms Nayacakalou and the convicted fraudster for whom she acted as a licensed proxy, which was appropriately dealt with by the High Court. That case may have been referred to in Mr Menzies’ submissions to the Employment Court. But who is the shadow liquidator with the fraud conviction?
We can’t disclose that here because of another non-publication order. Leighton Associates and BusinessDesk applied to have it lifted in 2025, unsuccessfully, but it still leaks like a sieve.
As one of our guest bloggers noted, it’s a small industry; people talk.
Tristam Price, Editor
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