A unit at 10 Gray Ave in Māngere East is up for mortgagee sale and is linked to businessmen linked to the collapse of the Yoyoso and Miniso retail chains in New Zealand. Photo / Michael Craig
Thirty-three companies have gone under, more than $61 million is owed and nobody’s answering. The Herald has traced an Auckland empire’s collapse through dozens of financial documents.
A rundown Auckland rental — in a block where tenants reportedly lived in “some of the worst” conditions seen and faced gang intimidation— is now up for mortgagee sale amid a $61 million business collapse.
Ex-prisoners housed in the seven-unit Māngere East complex were last year awarded $25,900 by the Tenancy Tribunal.
One tenant drilled a hole in her kitchen floor so leaking sewage could drain away and spent six months without hot water. When she complained, men - one in a gang vest - arrived and forced tenants out.
Another tenant was also reportedly assaulted, a visiting probation officer was threatened and told to leave, and housing inspectors were later told they could not take photographs, the tribunal decision said.
Flat 1’s real estate advertisement strikes a hopeful note, telling potential buyers: “Opportunity knocks”.
“Bring your tools, your ideas and your imagination — the potential is here for those prepared to roll up their sleeves.”
Flat 1 is among the last pieces to fall as creditors pick apart a business empire that ranged from property investment and car rentals to supermarkets and Chinese toy and snack chains.
Lin Liu, 33, and Qin Ding, 42, built joint and separate business networks over about seven years, serving as directors on scores of companies.
More than 60 land titles were owned either personally or through companies linked to the pair.
Almost all of the homes and flats are in Auckland. At least 10 have been sold by mortgagee sale, land records and real estate listings show.
The highest profile assets were the Yoyoso and Miniso Chinese retail chains - selling budget home goods and toys - and Auckland’s Acecco Asian supermarkets.
Liu was the main shareholder in those businesses, with Yoyoso featuring a prominent two-storey store in Auckland CBD’s Queen St and a Sylvia Park shopping mall branch — all now in liquidation, public records show.
Overall, at least 33 companies linked to the pair have gone into liquidation or receivership - almost all in the final months of last year, according to public records.
Early liquidator reports state more than $61.7m is owed - more than $33m of that to external creditors such as banks, private lenders and the taxman.
Vulnerable tenant ‘lost all she worked for’
The 1/10 Gray Ave, Māngere East flat now on sale was not one of the two units named in the 2025 tribunal case.
But it is in the same block of seven, has the same owner, and was caught in the same events.
The tenants were ex-prisoners, placed in units 2 and 5 by a reintegration process.
Neither had a choice of accommodation and both “felt they had to take the units as they found them”, the tribunal adjudicator recorded.
One of the women complained to the government department overseeing tenancy laws in July 2022.
When inspectors later visited, they described the homes as among the worst they had seen in their careers.
Weeks later - with the landlord aware of the investigation - a group of men arrived at the block.
The men assaulted a tenant and told others to leave - one of them was wearing a gang vest, the tribunal heard.
The tenant lodging the original complaint fled, leaving all her possessions in her unit.
By the time she returned, she couldn’t get in - fencing had been erected around the entire block and men were standing guard, she told the tribunal.
Inspectors were also told they couldn’t take photographs, while a probation officer was threatened and told to leave.
When the case reached a tribunal hearing, nobody from the landlord businesses showed up, the adjudicator said.
The tribunal found the main tenant had “worked hard to establish her home and life” in a unit it described as “unsanitary and dangerous”, but then “lost all she had worked for” during the “unlawful eviction”.
The landlords were ordered to pay a $25,900 fine, with the adjudicator saying she was concerned they “consider themselves above the law”.
The landlords behind the flats
Liu and Ding are directly tied to the Gray Ave flats.
All seven units are owned by the firm 8A Gray Avenue Ltd, whose sole director is Ding.
That company is wholly owned by LDW Ltd of which Liu is sole director with a 90% shareholding, and Ding holds the other 10%.
Day-to-day management of the units ran through a third company, LDW Property Management, which both men were also tied to — and which was ordered to pay more than $6000 to Kumeū tenants in a separate set of tribunal cases.
Fast rise, fast fall
Liu’s rise came at a young age.
He opened his first Yoyoso company in January 2019, aged 25. His first Miniso company followed seven months later. By the end of the year he was a director of 17 companies.
In August last year, a Yoyoso manager told Stuff its showpiece Queen St store was struggling with high rents and public works blocking foot traffic.
Then, three days before Christmas, 23 companies behind his Yoyoso, Miniso and Acecco chains went under on a single day, Companies Office records show.
Liu is now being chased for bankruptcy through the High Court, BusinessDesk has reported.
Ding, meanwhile, is the sole shareholder of four of the failed companies and holds a minority shareholding in LDW.
An Auckland industrial block in Penrose he owned personally — 60, 64 and 64A Walls Rd — which both men used as a registered address for many of their businesses - was sold in June by mortgagee sale.
33 failed companies
Five insolvency firms along with the Government’s Official Assignee are now working through the business empirecollapse, generating dozens of reports.
Early reports record more than $61m owed across the companies.
About $33m of that is to outsiders — banks, private lenders, car finance companies and the taxman, the reports show.
The rest is money the companies owe each other and their own shareholders, which the liquidators say they have yet to verify.
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According to land records, mortgages on some of the properties owned by the companies progressed from banks to private individuals.
A separate financial register shows that from late 2023, a series of private lenders laid claim to everything Liu and Ding personally owned - and anything they might buy later.
Two of those claims were lodged on December 12, 2025 - 10 days before 23 of the companies went under.
Lenders routinely lodge such claims. The register records no amounts, and a claim can stay on it long after a debt has been repaid.
Where the debt lies
The debt splits roughly three ways, matching the property, retail and car rental arms of the businesses.
LDW Ltd - sole shareholder in the company owning the Gray Ave flats - is reported to owe about $17m to outsiders, according to the first liquidator report.
They record $15m of debt as being “loans from third parties” with “the identity of the lenders” yet to be investigated.
The retail arm — Liu’s Yoyoso, Miniso and Acecco supermarket companies — owes about $7m externally, receivers reports show.
The third arm is car rentals. Ding is now the sole shareholder and director of both Great Rentals and Lease2Go, Companies Office records show.
Liu was also a director of both — resigning from Lease2Go in 2024 and Great Rentals in March last year.
They carry the single largest debt to a bank in the collapse — a Kiwibank claim of $7.83m, held over both.
No one’s talking
Five insolvency firms and the Official Assignee are now picking through the companies.
They are getting little help from the two men at the centre of them.
PKF - the insolvency firm trawling through LDW Ltd’s finances - said it wrote to Liu but got no reply and understood he was now living in China.
Ding took one phone call, gave nothing of substance, and then stopped responding, PKF liquidators Stephen Lawrence and Christopher McCullagh wrote in their first report on LDW Ltd in July.
“We endeavoured to make further contact with Mr Ding, but he failed to reply and cooperate,” they said.
They then issued formal notices requiring Liu, Ding “and other persons involved in the company’s affairs” to submit to examination.
“All parties failed to attend,” they said.
The Herald has sought comment from Liu and Ding.
SEE 1/10 GRAY AVE’s ONEROOF FOR SALE LISTING HERE .
