UNSECURED creditors caught up in the collapse of Bathurst's GJ Gardner Homes franchise are unlikely to receive one cent of the money owed to them.
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Seventy-seven creditors are owed more than $1.3 million by the directors of the company, which had been trading as Aluka Constructions under Luke Farraway.
Liquidator Chad Rapsey wrote to creditors on Thursday advising them of a creditors' meeting to be held in Bathurst next month.
In the letter Mr Rapsey essentially told creditors that even with the recent sale of the company director's house "there are no other sources of funding available that would allow the directors to meet the claims in whole or part".
As a result, he was of the view "it may be uncommercial to continue with recovery action in this regard".
Bathurst plumber Geoff Bennett, who is owed more than $100,000, said he wasn't surprised to learn he would never see his money.
But Mr Bennett said he was "absolutely filthy" about it and said legislation should be put in place to protect contractors who were often the ones to lose out.
Mr Bennett said it was unlikely he would attend the creditors' meeting.
"I"m better off to do a day's work rather than sit around a table to be told I won't be getting a thing," he said.
Mr Bennett said the parent company, GJ Gardner Homes, should have stepped in to help.
"Where is their insurance for the contractors?" he said.
"I'm a company and we pay insurance. If I go in and flood someone's house it gets fixed.
"If the house burns down, my insurance covers it. What's the difference?
"GJ Gardner Homes should have insurance if something like this happens."
Mr Bennett, who has worked seven days a week to keep his own business afloat since the collapse of GJ Gardner Homes, said it would take his business another five years to recover.
In Mr Rapsey's latest correspondence to creditors, the liquidator said it was his preliminary view that the company - which went into liquidation in August 2017 - had traded while insolvent from as early as October 2016 and had incurred debts in the vicinity of $1.1 million since that date.
Mr Rapsey also noted the company's management accounts recorded loans owing by the directors in the amount of $256,598.
He told creditors he wrote to the directors demanding the repayment of the loan and said preliminary negations with them suggested they intended to pay the net proceeds of the sale of their personal residential property to the company to reduce the directors' loan.
However, when the property settled in March 2019, the draft settlement statement indicated the sale of the property was $55,000 less than the original asking price.
The first registered mortgagee's debt had also increased by approximately $96,000 compared to previous estimates, and after the cost of sale and secured creditors were taken into account there was a $46,000 shortfall.
While Mr Rapsey negotiated for $2000 to be paid to the company, he said there were insufficient funds available from the sale of the property to meet creditors' claims, adding it was "uncommercial to continue with recovery action" given the directors' inability to meet claims.