Belvue Apartments Crosslease 93132

Our Building

Current matters

Home, Who we are, Where we're going, Current matters, Privacy, Contact
The "great wall" issue

Wall, Car park, Manager pay, Audit, Gardening, Rubbish, Transparency, Accounting, Positive news

AGM 2015 Update

The wall issue was not discussed at the AGM. Nevertheless, it remains unresolved. For anyone interested in what was revealed at the Court, it is on public record and can be obtained from Auckland District Court under case number "CIV 2014-004-1306". I'm happy to supply copies of what was filed in Court (by both parties) to any owner and to explain further background information in a way that can be understood by non-lawyers. I've been always open and available for a talk and remain so. But as usual in legal matters, there are things that can be revealed in public and there are things that are protected by legal privilege and cannot be revealed in public. Let me make just a few general remarks at this time.

First, the wall issue won't go away as long as the wall itself remains standing, but our property's "Deposited Plan 93132" is not updated to include it. It affects every owner of our shared property. If you don't think it affects you, then think again: by the time you want to sell your property, your property's buyer can claim this "defect in title" against you and simply walk away from an already signed sales contract or demand a set-off payment from you. You may easily lose more than $10,000 this way. I will explain this in further detail to you soon.

Second, Court action can easily get much more expensive than initially expected. It took me a lot of effort (and some of my own money) to get started. But concluding a Court case against a multi-millionaire can quickly become unaffordable, regardless of its merits. However, with the evidence accumulated on public record so far, our Crosslease is now in a good position to have the wall removed and its costs re-imbursed by Graham, without me having to sink-in more of my private money on legal action.

AGM 2014 Update

On 16. September 2014, Court proceedings under the "Property Law Act 2007" in the matter of "Crosslease dispute over wall" have been filed in the District Court at Auckland. The "Notice of Proceeding" and related court papers have been served on Graham Smith by Christoph Paszyna (acting in the interest of the Crosslease) just prior to the commencement of the AGM. The matter is now in the hands of the courts, as I initially indicated that it would end up in my 21.10.2013 e-mail below.

AGM 2013 update

During the AGM, Graham Smith finally admitted, he had given the go-ahead for building the new wall at the front of our property. It is now on record in our AGM notes, saying "the Chairman engaged MRT Construction Limited to construct a block wall at the cost of $10,925 incl GST". The related e-mails on the last 3 pages of our AGM handouts show that BCA and the other Owners Committee members were notified, while I was the only Committee member deliberately excluded from this communication. These e-mails are another proof that Graham/BCA concealed their actions and communications from me, while I maintained an inclusive and transparent communication policy at all times.

During the AGM, Graham claimed the decision to build the wall was a decision by "the Owners Committee". This claim can not be true, as I made clear on day 1 of the building activity (see my 21. October 2013 e-mail below). If our OCM meeting minutes are to be trusted as record of what was and what was not decided by the Owners Committee, I have the paper copies as proof in my possession. A formal decision to build the wall was never made in my presence, as I was alert enough to caution on every occasion about the need to obtain prior approval. Of course, those OCM members, who wanted to build the wall regardless of its legality, were unhappy with my stance, which led to their insistance that further cooperation with me would not be possible, which in turn led to me being voted out of the Owners Committee.

But I'm relaxed now. Now that I no longer hold formal responsibility for the shared actions of the Owners Committee, I can be more effective in holding the Owners Committee and BCA Ltd to account. There are democratic rights that protect the interests of all owners against the misuse of power.

Initial Posting of October 2013

This is what happened and what I reported on Monday, 21. October 2013:

From: Christoph Paszyna
Date: 21 October 2013 22:51:12 NZDT
To: Alana Augustino, Graham Smith
Cc: Catherine Byrne, Warrick Smith, Janet Steedman, Glenn Kwok, Paula Beaton
Subject: Belvue - unauthorised and illegal building activity

Hi all,

when I arrIved home today, I discovered significant excavations at the street frontage of our property in progress. This is obviously part of the previously raised proposal to build a wall enclosing the front garden outside the building manager apartment.

All members of the owners committee have been made fully aware that such a wall would effectively take away property rights to our building's common property from all apartment owners and turn this into private use property of the building manager apartment. Under the laws applicable to our crosslease property, such an action would require the written consent of all our 65 apartment owners and the re-drafting and re-registration of the building plans with the land registry. This is a prescribed legal process designed to protect the rights of property owners under NZ law.

Obviously, such a legal process has not been followed and therefore, the building of such a wall would be an illegal activity. Progress of this activity has to be stopped immediately!

I have attended all properly notified OCMs in the past year and am sure, no formal decision to build such a wall was ever made there (it would be outside the decision powers of an OCM and even AGM, anyway). I can therefore only conclude, this is the unauthorised initiative of one or more individuals, who don't care about the rights of others and hope to just "get away with it" by creating concrete facts.

Alana,

if BCA holds any records that led to the go-ahead being given to the contractor to perform this work, please preserve these records carefully, as they may be required as evidence in court. This is literally an attempted illegal land-grab currently in progress. I'm asking BCA to urgently inform all apartment owners about this violation of their property rights and have the building activity stopped immediately, pending a full legal review.

Graham,

this also means, it would be an illegal misuse of funds, if you paid for this work out of our crosslease's funds, for which you have been entrusted with the banking authority more than 10 years ago. The payment of contractor costs is the personal responsibility of whoever initiated this unauthorised action (I guess, the initiator is a millionaire, anyway, and can afford it).

Cheers,
 Christoph


The only response so far is absolute silence. Three days later, when the building of the wall was in full progress,

I followed up this e-mail with the following:


From: Christoph Paszyna
Date: 24 October 2013 9:40:00 NZDT
To: Alana Augustino, Glenn Kwok, Paula Beaton
Cc: Graham Smith, Catherine Byrne, Warrick Smith, Janet Steedman
Subject: Re: Belvue - unauthorised and illegal building activity

Hi,

I'm asking BCA Ltd as the keeper of our crosslease's records to urgently reveal any information about why and by whom the go-ahead for the building activity described below was given.

If you have any legal opinion about this matter in your possession, I'm asking you to reveal this, too. But please don't delay your reply by waiting for a legal opinion to be supplied, if you don't have one in your possession right now.

Cheers,
 Christoph


Again, the only response so far is absolute silence. However, I can report on additional background to this story.

To be absolutely sure, I've looked up the original ground plan for our building as registered with the land registry. This is where I discovered another land-grab that must have occured some time more than 12 years ago (before I bought my apartment). It is reported on the car park page.