“What he has done to me, my family and others is somewhat of a horror story,” Spencer said.
RLITS described itself as a construction company that employed 120 staff, typically recruiting from overseas.
RLITS was on paper directed and owned by Roy and Spencer’s father, Northland-based Raymond Bishop, but he told the Herald earlier this year he was unaware of signing documents incorporating the company and making himself a director.
“There is a number of forged documents which Spencer and I had no knowledge of,” Bishop snr said.
The liquidator said Raymond Bishop had attended an interview to discuss the company and did not indicate he was being referred for investigation.
The Official Assignee said RLITS owed a total of $8.6m to creditors, including more than $4m to Inland Revenue. Two associated companies placed into liquidation by the Official Assignee owed a further $1.8m.
The vast majority of recoveries to date at RLITS came from the seizure and sale of a 2017 Ferrari 488 sports car, which netted $248,500.
The report said the Official Assignee was also looking into the company’s possible ownership of a 2003 “46-foot [14m] ply construction vessel”, but this was “subject to multiple liens and reported to have condition issues”.
An early liquidator’s report advised unsecured creditors – said to be owed $3.4m – to brace for returns of “0 cents in $”.
Roy Bishop, 37, has two previous bankruptcies and has twice been convicted for fraud. He is also reported to use the aliases Raymond and Vincent.
Late last year, Roy told the Herald he was sorry for his business failures.
“I acknowledge my past and take responsibility for previous mistakes. These experiences have been significant learning moments,” he said in an email.
Roy is understood to be overseas – he told the Herald in January he was “in the Middle East working for a drilling firm” – and even his own family said they did not know where on Earth he was.
The collapse of RLITS appears to have caused a schism in the Bishop family, with Spencer and Raymond blaming Roy, who they said fled overseas once the company started teetering.
“He f**ked up. As for us and the other siblings, we don’t have a brother. That’s brutal, but what he’s done to us is worse,” Spencer told the Herald in January.
Raymond, asked if he wanted to find and make contact with Roy, said earlier this year: “I mean, he’s still our son, but no.”
Roy’s email address, active late last year, is now inactive. He could not be reached for comment.
Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism – including twice being named Reporter of the Year – and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting from business newspapers and national magazines.
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