In a written update to people owed money following the collapse of the company, joint liquidator Leonard Gerber said that he was continuing to recover payments from people who still owed money to the firm, but a refusal by some to engage was going to lead him to pursue recoveries through the courts.
The liquidators have already started litigation against former directors of RG Falla on the basis of wrongful trading, seeking to recover £3.8m.
‘There are a number of debtors, some of them prominent members of the community, who have so far refused to pay the substantial sums they owe to the liquidation estate of Hurel,’ Mr Gerber said.
‘Unless these remaining debtors now engage sensibly and in a timely manner, I regrettably intend to commence litigation against them also in order to maximise the recoveries for the estate.’
Mr Gerber said that since he and colleagues from Leonard Curtis CI had taken over the liquidation more than a year ago he had started to pursue recoveries for creditors, initially with some success.
He said that the action against the former RG Falla directors ‘had left the proverbial door open’ to the defendants and their insurers to ‘sensibly engage’.
Such an approach would be likely to result in a better outcome for the company’s creditors, many of whom were local resident builders and tradespeople, he said.
Mr Gerber added that should the case come to court, he was ‘keenly confident of success’.
Creditors could expect updates if court proceedings were pursued, he said, or when he had ‘significant news to report’.
At the time of the collapse of the company and the former Garenne Group in spring 2023, the then liquidators initially said that there was ‘no money and no realisations in the company’ with ‘no money in the bank and no assets that we can put our hands on’.
Although it was understood that some former RG Falla clients had admitted owing retentions to the company on the completion of contracts, these had remained unpaid, partly because it was unclear as to who should receive them.
