The Companies Act 1993 defines a phoenix company as being, in relation to a failed company, a company that at any time before or within five years after the commencement of the liquidation of a failed company, is known by a name that is also a pre-liquidation name of a failed company or is a similar name. When phoenix company arrangements are established in which the new company created bears a similar name, similar assets and similar management structure to a failed company, the purposes of such companies are usually part of a scheme either to circumvent obligations to creditors of the failed company (avoid debts owed) or to mislead the public into believing they are dealing with the same entity as previous, possibly as part of an attempt to mislead creditors of the previous company.
ASB Showgrounds, Erotica Expo Ltd in Liquidation & Role of Porn King Steve Crow
The ASB Showgrounds in Auckland has allowed a failed hardcore porn company that has been declared insolvent and consequently placed into liquidation on 27 May 2009, to organise a three-day porn promotion sleaze event where all cameras, videos and ptx phones are banned.
(see: http://www.bvents.com/event/166191-erotica-lifestyles-expo ).
Any person[s] found within the venue taking video or still images will immediately be thrown out from the porn fest says big boss Porn King Stephen Peter Crow (Steve Crow) and all images recorded will be forcibly removed.
The Society is asking: Why has ASB Showgrounds management allowed a company in liquidation to enter into such an arrangement? Some media commentators predict it will attract no more than a few hundred people with a sexual dysfunction or those seeking titillation from porn sleaze and extravagantly priced sex toys or seeking AIDS for the impotent or promiscuous.
Liquidator, Lloyd Hayward of Accountants Meltzer Mason and Heath, in his report dated 3 June 2009 and available on the Companies website, states that Malibu Media Ltd (In Liq) (formerly Erotica Expo Ltd) owes unsecured creditors and shareholders $145,665 and $18,649 to IRD. He reports that the company Steve Crow directed failed mainly because of very poor attendances at the most recent Erotica Lifestyles Expos held in Wellington and Christchurch (see Co. No. 1275425 www.companies.govt.nz). These debts together with those of three other porn companies that were directed by Steve Crow, all of which have been placed into liquidation, amount to over 1.3 million dollars. The Liquidator has confirmed that there is nothing left for creditors.
Currently there is no registered company by the name “Erotica Expo Ltd”. Crow changed the name of the company he directed – Erotica Expo Ltd (Co. No.1275425) – to Malibu Media Ltd, on 1 May 2009, one month before it was placed in liquidation; no doubt to try and hide the financial failure being linked to the brand name “Erotica Expo Ltd” which he continues to use in breach of the Companies Act 1993.