Tears, defiance and a $12m payment: Inside embattled director’s ‘tense’ investor meeting

Wednesday, 18 February 2026

A woman was reduced to tears at a face-to-face meeting with the controversial businessman with whom she had invested her life savings. That man was Bernard Whimp, who told dozens of unhappy people in attendance that he was in no way at fault. Jake Kenny reports.

Bernard Whimp was lying in bed at his Rangiora apartment, north of Christchurch, last December when his cellphone rang.

(Stuff has reported on the man who calls himself ‘NZ’s Donald Trump’ before. You can read it here.)

It was an unusually early call - 6.20am - and he didn’t recognise the number, so let it go to voicemail.

After a few minutes, curiosity got the better of him, and he phoned the number back. It was the police. The officer said they were outside his work offices and had some papers for him.

Whimp, whose home was just down the road, said he’d be there shortly.

But by the time he’d got himself dressed and walked out the door - he was met by dozens of police officers and investigators.

He saw the letters ‘FMA’ and ‘SFO’ on some of their vests.

Suddenly, things became clearer. The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) and Serious Fraud Office (SFO) were two agencies he was familiar with.

Over the next two days across three different buildings, Whimp’s Chance Voight offices were combed extensively by the authorities. They seized more than 35,000 documents.

“As far as I’m concerned, they’re welcome to them,” Whimp told a room of about 30 investors at the same offices on Saturday, as he recounted details of the raid.

Other investors from around the country were dialled into the meeting online.

Those who attended in person met on the ground floor before being taken up the lift by a staff member and into a board room. There they met Whimp clad in a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up, dress pants and black cowboy boots.

“There was a huge Chance Voight logo on the wall. The furnishings were excessively flash,” one attendee told Stuff. “There were huge television screens behind him.

“The whole place just oozed excessiveness.”

Stuff has obtained a recording of the meeting. Whimp said he organised it to provide explanations to his investors. Over the course of the next two-and-a-half hours he went well beyond that.

More on that later.

Contact the reporter: jake.kenny@stuffdigital.co.nz.

First, it is necessary to traverse why explanations were required in the first place. In December last year, six of Chance Voight’s 27 companies were placed into interim liquidation by the High Court as the FMA investigated the group and its director.

The companies were believed to have received more than $45m in investments from ordinary, everyday people over the past four years.

Stuff previously reported that many of the more than 100 investors were understood to be elderly.

At the meeting, Whimp said there were around 180 investors, and the total of investments received were just shy of $51m.

The FMA investigation is grounded in its claims that Chance Voight was trading while insolvent, made repeated breaches of the Companies Act and did not disclose financial information when requested.

At the meeting, Whimp told investors the suspected insolvency was “nonsense”.

He referred to alleged breaches of the Companies Act as “irrelevant and trivial”. He also confirmed Chance Voight did fail to supply information requested by the FMA, but described this as “momentary” and “passing” and blamed two former accountants of the company.

The first investors to address him were a husband and wife.

According to the woman, her husband visited the Chance Voight offices in November and invested their entire life savings - $100,000 - with the first interest payment to be returned to them a week after the companies were placed into interim liquidation.

It was the first time the couple had ever invested money into anything, she said.

According to another investor at the meeting, who Stuff has agreed not to identify, tears began rolling down the woman’s face as she asked Whimp how it was possible that he did not know about the FMA’s looming investigation at the time they invested.

“This was not spare money or a speculative investment. It was our life savings. Money built up over years through hard work, trust and the belief that it was being managed responsibly,” she said, before making a direct plea to Whimp.

“We’re asking for honesty, accountability and the genuine commitment that you are doing everything possible to maximise recovery and explain how this was allowed to happen.”

Whimp assured her Chance Voight had no inkling of any impending investigation at the time she and her husband invested. He then took a swipe at the FMA.

“That was deliberate on [their] part,” he said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a commercial event like this in New Zealand history. I’ve been a student of business all my adult life and I have never seen anything like what was done to Chance Voight by the FMA.”

According to Whimp, two former Chance Voight employees made complaints about the companies to the FMA.

He could not say more, he said, due to confidentiality orders. “What I would say is their complaints are without merit.”

He said he had dismissed both of the staff members for other reasons.

Malcolm Hollis, John Fisk and Lara Bennett of PwC have been appointed interim liquidators and provided a report on Chance Voight’s affairs to the High Court in late January.

One investor asked Whimp: If Chance Voight was as liquid as he claimed, why did it take so long for the interim liquidators to establish this?

Whimp said he had received PwC’s report. “I don’t regard it as being worth the paper it is printed on,” he said.

“PwC are colluding in some way with the FMA to eventually get to their objective of liquidating these companies.”

Stuff understands it has been recommended that the remaining 21 Chance Voight companies also be placed into liquidation.

Whimp was also asked if Chance Voight pays taxes.

“It hasn’t had to,” he said. “It’s got $14 million of losses to offset any tax bill.”

What about previously, and is Inland Revenue happy with Chance Voight?

“In my view, Inland Revenue owes Chance Voight Investment Corporation about $1.5m of GST refunds,” Whimp said.

“That’s been in dispute for 18 months. We believe we’re right, and it’s been through an audit process, and the FMA have just gone very quiet about it so we don’t owe them any money. They owe Chance Voight a whole lot.”

Since its inception in 2021, Chance Voight sought legal advice regularly from one of New Zealand’s most experienced financial lawyers, Whimp said, who Stuff has chosen not to name.

Whimp would meet with the lawyer regularly, he said.

Some quick fire questions from investors followed.

Were the meetings minuted?

Whimp: “No, [they were] just meetings between [he] and I talking about operations of the law.”

What is the lawyer’s opinion about the investigation and interim liquidations?

Whimp: “I haven’t consulted [him] about any of it. I think [he] is exceptionally worried.”

Why? Will the lawyer be targeted by the authorities?

“No he won’t be targeted,” Whimp said. “Well, he might get targeted if his advice turns out to be crap.” (Whimp laughed at this point and said this was a throwaway comment).

Whimp then front footed some aspects of the business that he said authorities had criticised him about.

He said he was personally liable for all of Chance Voight’s leases on its buildings and vehicles on finance agreements (presumably including the Chance Voight helicopter used widely in promos).

He was also personally liable for any Employment Relations Authority (ERA) cases taken against Chance Voight by former employees, he said.

Then came perhaps the biggest revelation of the day.

Whimp told the dozens of investors that he had set up an external management company, that he ran, that received $12m from Chance Voight.

“PwC are highly critical of this,” he said. “All these geniuses at PWC and the FMA think those are management fees.

“They say, ‘Mr Whimp’s been paid $12m of management fees during the life of this company, and for all we know, he’s got $10m of that sitting in a bank account and spent $2m managing it.’”

Whimp said his management company never made a profit by providing services to Chance Voight.

“[It was] for cost recovery of employing people and running Chance Voight,” he said.

“But it didn’t stop the FMA persuading a High Court judge that this looked really dodgy…it’s just the costs of wages and rent and everything else that costs to run a firm.”

Since the investigation into Chance Voight began, Stuff has spoken to a small group of investors who between them invested more than $1m in the firm.

One of those investors described Saturday’s meeting with Whimp as “tense” but “civil”.

Another, Sue*, invested $750,000 - her and her husband’s retirement - with the hope of receiving a relatively modest return (approximately $50,000 in interest).

Now, she does not know if she will see any of that money again.

Towards the end of the meeting, Whimp told investors the court dispute with the FMA (on whether the Chance Voight companies will be placed into full liquidation) could take a year.

He said that the close to $51m of money invested was now almost certainly not going to be returned in full, something he blamed on the FMA.

A first call in the High Court at Christchurch is being heard on Thursday. Substantive arguments are not expected to be made until a later date.

In a statement on Tuesday, an FMA spokesperson said it had asked the High Court to release PwC’s report because it considered “there is strong public interest in the report being made available to investors and the wider public”.

At the meeting, Whimp was asked if he would be talking to the media at court.

“If you’re sending someone from Stuff I’ll probably just tell them to F off.”

Stuff contacted Whimp for comment on this story. “I’m too busy to talk to you today,” he said.

He then hung up.