THE City Pacific liquidator Andrew Wily was in Brisbane yesterday collecting 200 boxes of records from the failed Gold Coast property financier’s Miami Keys headquarters.

These records may provide the only chance of a return for the company’s unsecured creditors as the Commonwealth Bank – which holds a $100 million secured loan over City Pacific assets – is ”highly unlikely” to recoup all that it is owed, according to the liquidator David Hurst of Armstrong Wily.

The small list of unsecured creditors is expected to swell as lawsuits emerge over the company’s lending practices and management of the $1 billion First Mortgage Fund it controlled until recently.

These loans were expected to come under close scrutiny as the liquidators sifted through the company’s records looking for evidence of uncommercial transactions, voidable transactions, and breach of directors’ duties, Mr Hurst said.

The liquidators, who have also taken charge of 11 City Pacific subsidiaries, had been liaising with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, and investigations were continuing, he said.

The liquidators are expected to report on their investigations early next year on what may be one of the few avenues offering a return for most creditors.

Commonwealth Bank picked up $9.5 million from the sale of City Pacific’s headquarters last week to a recipient of Queensland’s next boom industry, the oil and gas explorer Icon Energy, but the recovery of the other $90 million is not expected to be so easy.

According to the report, the company’s main assets are $202.5 million in loans made primarily to its subsidiaries and other property developers.

Of this, receivers are expected to claw back as little as $67 million.

The receivers, led by Ian Carson of PPB, said that even this estimate of recoverable loans was ‘’significantly overstated”.

Much of the loss was generated from joint-venture projects with other Gold Coast developers.

A $44.5 million loan to Craig Perry’s private company Foresight Acquisitions has been deemed irrecoverable, as has a $26.9 million loan to SP Marina, a joint venture with the restructured Gold Coast developer Raptis Group.

The dismal recovery prospects at City Pacific do not bode well for the First Mortgage Fund, which was under City Pacific’s control when investments were made with many of these same ventures, although the fund has priority ranking in the creditors’ queue.

An update on the value of the fund, which has already been written down to $600 million, is expected this week from its new responsible entity, Balmain Trilogy, which wrested control from City Pacific in July.

The loss of its $50 million fee stream from the fund led to City Pacific’s collapse within weeks.