IRD investigation<\/a>.<\/p>\nA third Hills staff member \u2013 previously listed on the Hills website as part of its management team \u2013 also appeared at Wallace with the job title of compliance lead.<\/p>\n
Shortly after the Herald sent media questions, Prakash, Prasad and the third staff member were scrubbed from Wallace\u2019s site.<\/p>\n
However, the Herald then noticed eight other Hills staff were on Wallace\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
One former Hills staff member had taken over 10 for-sale listings that previously been under Prakash and Prasad\u2019s names on the site.<\/p>\n
A former Hills office manager was also listed as South Auckland office manager for Wallace, yet Wallace\u2019s website didn\u2019t mention a South Auckland office.<\/p>\n
Most of their profile photos matched ones previously used on the Hills website.<\/p>\n
When sent further questions, Nutting denied Wallace had taken over the Hills business.<\/p>\n
\u201cWallace has not acquired, absorbed, or entered into any formal takeover arrangement with Hills Real Estate,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is common practice within the New Zealand real estate sector for licensed salespeople to move independently between agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said \u201cseveral former Hills salespeople chose to associate themselves with Wallace\u201d after leaving their previous agency.<\/p>\n
However, anyone \u201cdirectly implicated in the IRD liquidation proceedings are no longer involved with Wallace in any capacity\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as we became aware of the matters under investigation, we acted immediately to remove them from Wallace.\u201d<\/p>\n
The law does not prevent agents in a liquidated firm from working in another company. <\/p>\n
A Real Estate Authority spokesman said the government regulator was aware of the staff changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cREA is aware that these licensees moved to Wallace Real Estate. We cannot make any other comment so as not to prejudice our processes or the rights of any parties,\u201d the spokesman said.<\/p>\n
![\"This]()
This home at 53 Burundi Ave, Clendon Park had been owned by property traders Hills Real Estate and was repossessed by lenders and sold at auction earlier this month. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
THE MONEY TRAIL<\/p>\n
The High Court action against Hills Real Estate is the latest step in a wider probe into four companies linked to Prakash and Prasad that are already in liquidation.<\/p>\n
The Herald last week reported that liquidators said the companies \u2013 Akrish Properties, NZ & Auckland Developments 2000, RN Properties, and Babasiga Homes \u2013 owed a combined $28m but had just $38,088 in their bank accounts.<\/p>\n
That was alleged to include $22m in unpaid tax, with $19m of it missed GST.<\/p>\n
Liquidators have frozen Prakash\u2019s assets and were investigating potential overdrawn shareholder accounts and potential breaches of director duties.<\/p>\n
They reported more than $730,000 in circular transfers between the companies and claimed the defendants had failed to hand over financial records on time.<\/p>\n
A Herald analysis last year of a selection of property deals linked to the Hills team found homes were bought for about $54m and resold for nearly $60m, with some properties passing through up to 11 linked companies before reaching a buyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the Herald sent questions, Wallace pulled personal profiles and for-sale listings by Prakash, Prasad and a third…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[12067,95,16425,51,1656,1349,6097,638,1138,72124,679,71,305,35698,21520,12898,16572,9860,7055,2739,47148,1132,13617,117,111,139,69,159074,6115,159073,9833,12417,1240,213,1516,13920,8238,686,102],"class_list":{"0":"post-285718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-aimed","9":"tag-and","10":"tag-appears","11":"tag-auckland","12":"tag-company","13":"tag-court","14":"tag-down","15":"tag-estate","16":"tag-firm","17":"tag-flipping","18":"tag-forced","19":"tag-from","20":"tag-have","21":"tag-hearing","22":"tag-hills","23":"tag-investigation","24":"tag-joined","25":"tag-king","26":"tag-linked","27":"tag-liquidation","28":"tag-looming","29":"tag-million","30":"tag-name","31":"tag-new","32":"tag-new-zealand","33":"tag-newzealand","34":"tag-nz","35":"tag-prakash","36":"tag-real","37":"tag-rickhil","38":"tag-setting","39":"tag-shutting","40":"tag-south","41":"tag-sports","42":"tag-staff","43":"tag-tried","44":"tag-under","45":"tag-week","46":"tag-with"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}