Friday Edition – We discover who really paid $33 million for commonage council land

A surprising buyer – with surprising council links

It’s a complex but intriguing set of information that’s emerged this week. So complex in fact that we have not had time to fully analyse what has happened. So here it is – unfiltered.

· The multi-billion-dollar Mackersy Property group CEO tells Crux they decided not to buy the $33 million block of QLDC Commonage Land.

· But one of their directors, Adam Copland - once fined by the Law Society for bringing the profession into disrepute – decided to buy the land with his own group of private investors.

· The sales agents, Colliers, have claimed that the land will be re-zoned by QLDC in the future from medium to high density.

· Former QLDC councillor Heath Copland, Adam’s brother, who is currently deputy chair of the QLDC Audit, Finance and Risk Committee, has sent abusive texts to Crux demanding we remove his name from our coverage as the matter is nothing to do with him. We discover that he is the long-standing main tax and advisory accountant for the Mackersy Property group.

· Adam himself has tried to use legal and personal threats to get our coverage shut down – resulting in an apology to Crux from Mackersy CEO Hamish Wilton.

Our stories our divided into sections for ease of reading.

· The explosive Copland brothers – and the $33 million commonage land that the Government gave to our council.

· A deep dive into how our council’s audit, finance and risk committee works. The role of Heath Copland as Deputy Chair and an unpleasant meeting with chair Stuart McLauchlan. Some paperwork buried in the agenda reveal the money used to build that illegal wall around the failed disposal field.

· Warren Cooper back in his mayoral and Tourism Minister days was instrumental in setting up the Act of Parliament that gifted commonage land to our local council. His wife Lorraine has written a strong opinion piece giving background to the deal – in the Mountain Scene – where she also backing the shutting down of Queenstown development due to our sewage crisis. Ironic given that the Mountain Scene has not written one word about the sewage crisis or the role of the QLDC.

· The Overseas Investment Office explains how they are focussed on looking into the background of property syndicates where representatives might be suspected of acting as front people for non-approved overseas buyers.

The explosive Copland brothers – and the $33 million commonage land that the Government gave to our council

• Adam Copland

During the course of this week Business Desk claimed to have revealed the $33 million buyer of the Commonage Land in Vancouver Drive. They said it was Mackersy Property with the main player being lawyer and partner Adam Copland.

QLDC had said in a media release that the buyer was confidential but that they would soon reveal details of their intended use of the land.

We first called Heath Copland (currently deputy chair of the QLDC Audit, Risk and Finance Committee) to see if there was any family connection to Adam Copland. He said that Adam was his brother but that he thought that Mackersy was not the buyer. He added that there was no conflict anyway and that he was not familiar with the deal we were asking about.

• Heath Copland

A company search had shown that Adam and Heath were 50/50 owners of a company called Rossland Investments Ltd, and also that Adam was a director shareholder in Mackersy Property Holdings Ltd along with CEO Hamish Wilton other parties.

Then we called Adam Copland. He seemed agitated and spent many minutes saying the deal was confidential and that he was entitled to keep it secret. He made various negative comments about journalism - both general and personal – and argued that he was not the buyer – or the developer.

He did say that he was working with people who were entitled to keep their names secret because “if people knew their names and knew they were rich they’d get asked for money all the time.” Mr Copland also gave a lot of detail about how steep and difficult the land was and how it would take a lot of money to build on – always using the term “we” – not “they.”

He also said that “medium density housing was the focus because “that’s how the land is zoned.”

Mr Copland made no reference to the Colliers sales material for the land that says:

“The site’s Medium Density Residential zoning under Queenstown Lakes District Council’s Proposed District Plan allows density of one dwelling unit per 250sq m of land area. Queenstown Lakes District Council has also recently notified a variation to the Proposed District Plan, proposing to delete the one unit per 250sq m rule, which would enable even greater density.”

Within a short time of this call with Adam Copland we had a claim from him that we had breached his rights by recording the conversation (not true) and to refer all further questions to Mackersy’s communications person Kyla Lang.