CAPITAL Globe Group, the company headed by slain businessman Shaquil Haque with property interests in Cairns, has gone into receivership.
Brisbane-based McGrathNicol has been appointed receivers by the National Australia Bank and moved quickly to close the Cairns office in Lake St with three staff. The bank has confirmed the
appointment.
The company’s interests in the Far North include the Smithfield Town Centre, the Northpoint housing subdivision also at Smithfield, the land for the Cairns Regional Council-approved $100 million twin tower complex in Sheridan St, the former Ainsworth gaming machine family mansion at Kewarra Beach, which was bought by the group for $5.5 million in 2006, an office in Lake St, a Harbour Lights penthouse on the Cairns waterfront, a house plus a block of land at Coreega Place, Mooroobool, and the Avenue 8 restaurant on the corner of Abbott and Shield streets.
Smithfield Town Centre developer Stephen Pellegrino said the centre could go head without the Capital Globe land.
A spokeswoman for the receivers said they were appraising the business and its assets.
She said there were no redundancies at this stage. She could not comment on the other offices, including Sydney and Hong Kong.
The woman said the matter was "very complicated" and McGrathNicol hoped to make a statement in a week.
The company hit the headlines last year after Mr Haque and his financial adviser, Charles Young, were shot dead in the Pakistan capital Islamabad on April 30.
Engineer Pat Flanaghan, who has been working on the town centre and Northpoint for Capital Globe, said he was contacted by the receivers yesterday.
"I am owed a lot of money but I have not had contact with (the chief executive) Rob Duff for about two months," he said.
Calls to the Cairns office were directed to the receivers. The Sydney office’s telephone was disconnected and there were no replies to calls to the Hong Kong office.
A former employee said he was owed $14,000 for land he sold at Northpoint.
He said unsold land at Northpoint had a caveat placed on it shortly after Mr Haque’s death and there had been no sales or redevelopment since.
The man said there were about 16 blocks unsold and about half of the 40ha subdivision was yet to be developed.
An $800,000 house used as the Northpoint sales office was involved in the caveat and there were other blocks of land with signs on saying they were in possession of the mortgagee.
Several people spoken to by The Cairns Post did not want to be named in connection with the group.
One client said he had been visited by a receiver’s representative that told him the bank had moved on the group’s Kewarra Beach mansion.
Former mayor Kevin Byrne, who once worked for the group and now works for the Bechtel Corporation in Papua New Guinea, could not be contacted yesterday.
Carl Williams, the former managing director and owner of LHL Investments – sold to Capital Globe in 2008 under a $30 million deal – could not be contacted
either.
