House-flipping king Rickhil Prakash allegedly withdrew as much as $6 million out of his own companies prior to their collapse, liquidators claim.
Now liquidators are attempting to recover the funds as the debt across the collapsed Hills Real Estate network of firms climbs past $31.5m.
Liquidators recently found about $800,000in further debt as they opened the books at two more collapsed companies linked to Prakash - a man previously named by the Herald as one of New Zealand’s biggest property flippers.
Eight firms have collapsed in connection with the trading network that was so prolific it ran its own Hills Real Estate agency to help it resell all the investment homes it bought.
Akrish Properties was the first of the firms linked to Prakash to be wound up in 2023, with the other companies continuing to operate for years. Six other companies then went into liquidation between June 2025 and May this year.
As well as increased debt, the latest reports alleged that Prakash owes his companies personally.
Liquidators of the firm Teneo found an overdrawn account of $831,088 at JH 2019 and an outstanding account of $141,411 at JA Properties, according to reports filed with the Companies Office.
That came on top of an earlier $5.45m overdrawn account recorded in a 2024 liquidation report for Akrish Properties - an amount that is understood to be contested in an upcoming court case.
Teneo signalled it was looking closely into Prakash’s activities as a director of Akrish Properties.
“We will continue to investigate the actions of the director and the affairs of the company to identify if there are any transactions of interest, insolvent transactions, or any breaches of law that may need referral to the authorities,” liquidators said in a report filed with the Companies Office last October.
Liquidators secure High Court date
Teneo also recently revealed it is going to the High Court next year to try to recover assets linked to the Akrish Properties.
Teneo earlier won court orders freezing Prakash’s personal assets and is pursuing claims against “five core related parties”, alleging property was shifted out of the company just before — and even on the day of — its liquidation.
After the 2024 report said liquidators had found a $5.45m overdrawn shareholder account, a later report in October last year listed the figure as to-be-confirmed, as Teneo mounted a case to take to court.
The firm has since added a sixth defendant in the case.
The liquidators also alleged a vehicle was moved out of Akrish Properties before the company folded.
When liquidators tracked the car down, they found it had since been re-registered to a different person — a person now listed as the sixth defendant, who they have written to demanding proof of how they came to own it, the new report said.
Creditors of Akrish Properties have so far spent $239,000 funding the two-year liquidation investigations and pending court case.
The taxpayer stands to be the biggest loser in the collapse of the firms linked to Prakash.
Most of the $31.5m being pursued is unpaid tax — much of its GST from buying and selling houses.
However, the companies have been left holding almost no cash while the properties and assets they owned have been mostly sold off - with mortgage lenders at the top of the debt tree, taking first cut from any recovered money to pay off their loans before the tax office can get its share.
Houses sold but little left for taxman
Another recent report gave updates on the investigation at Babasiga Homes, run by Vashneel Prasad - a colleague of Prakash at Hills Real Estate.
Babasiga Homes was one of the few firms in the network that was tipped into liquidation still owning assets.
It had nine investment properties in its name, however, all had mortgages on them.
Four have now been sold by the liquidators and three more went under the hammer at mortgagee auction, with the last two still in the process of being sold.
So far $2.56m has gone to the companies that lent mortgages on the properties — and nothing to Inland Revenue.
