His trust-owned homes and new shell companies told a different story
A worker who left CVI Management Services Limited Partnership - part of the Chance Voight Group, a network of approximately 27 companies and limited partnerships - raised a personal grievance for constructive dismissal, essentially arguing they had been forced out.
The two sides settled in December 2025. The company and its director agreed to pay the worker $50,000, plus $15,000 towards legal costs. Payment was due by December 23, 2025.
Nothing arrived.
Not on the due date. Not after the Employment Relations Authority stepped in with a compliance order in March 2026, requiring payment and adding penalties - $2,000 against the director and $1,000 against the company, both payable to the worker - along with $2,000 in costs.
Not a dollar moved.
The director, Bernard Whimp, then challenged those orders in the Employment Court, arguing he simply could not afford to pay. The worker, meanwhile, applied for sanctions - the Employment Relations Act allows the court to fine someone up to $40,000 or sentence them to up to three months in prison for defying an Authority order.
The trust homes, the Range Rover, the shell companies
The court heard Whimp's account of his finances. The house he lives in rent-free in Christchurch? Owned by a trust he set up years ago. The beneficiaries are family members. He is not one of them. A holiday home he uses from time to time? Same arrangement - held in trust for family beneficiaries that do not include him. The Range Rover he drives? Belongs to a relative who is a beneficiary of the two trusts.
His only income, he told the court, is the national superannuation. His only assets of any value: some computers.
Whimp did point to a beneficial interest in his late parents' farm - his father died around 1999 - but said it had been tied up in complex litigation ever since, with no inheritance distributed. He suggested that once that was resolved, he would have the means to pay.
Meanwhile, the court noted, Whimp had continued incorporating new companies after the settlement fell due. He described these as shell companies set up in anticipation of future ventures that never materialised.
The broader picture was bleak. CVI Management Services entered liquidation in July 2026. The liquidator's first report estimated a total shortfall to all creditors - including other employees and former employees - of approximately $2,500,000.
And the Chance Voight Group was already under regulatory scrutiny. In December 2025, the Financial Markets Authority had obtained High Court orders appointing interim liquidators for six group companies, along with asset preservation orders against Whimp that barred him from sending money or assets out of New Zealand. Those orders did not, however, prevent him from dealing with his assets within the country - meaning there was no legal barrier to paying the worker.
The worker's bind
The settlement included confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions. The worker agreed not to make public comments about the settlement or disparaging remarks about Whimp, the company, or any entity in the Chance Voight Group.
That was on the understanding they would actually be paid.
The court observed that the worker now considered neither Whimp nor the company ever intended to honour the agreement. The impacts on the worker, the court found, had been "considerable."
Wilful default, $15,000 fine
The Employment Court, in a judgment dated October 1, 2026, upheld the Authority's orders in full. It found no basis for suggesting the Authority had made any error of fact or law, and noted that Whimp had voluntarily entered the settlement, gaining the benefit of the worker dropping their proceedings and agreeing to confidentiality and non-disparagement terms. Nothing had prevented him or the company from honouring the agreement at the time.
The court found the default was "wilful" on Whimp's part. It noted he had made "complex arrangements" with his finances and those of the companies he is associated with, including settling trusts that placed assets beyond his personal control. He showed no remorse.
The court declined to order imprisonment - noting that the worker had not yet pursued less punitive enforcement options through the District Court or bankruptcy proceedings - but imposed a $15,000 fine. Of that, $12,000 was directed to the worker, recognising the impact on them and the steps they had taken to bring the matter to court.
The fine is payable within 28 days. The court directed it to the Ministry of Justice Collections Unit for enforcement and flagged further avenues open to the worker, including enforcement under Part 3 of the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 and bankruptcy proceedings.
For HR teams, the case is a practical illustration of what happens when a settlement agreement is only as good as the employer's willingness to pay. Where insolvency or asset structuring is a realistic risk, practitioners may want to think about security for payment, staged instalments with default triggers, or verifying the employer's financial position before agreeing to a deferred lump sum.
