At the start of the district licence committee hearing for Eleven Bar’s application to renew its liquor licence in February owner Prakash Khattri said his attention had been on another of his establishments.
Mr Khattri was an inexperienced bar owner and admitted mistakes, but he said an "improvement plan" was in place.
Once the hearing drew to a close, the formerly busy Octagon establishment lost its licence.
It had only been two years after it opened.
But by then the spotlight had turned on to Mr Khattri’s former business partners.
Directors Nikesh Singh and Naveen Malhotra were at the centre of an emerging scandal.
Beyond allegations of drinking on the job and drug-taking on the premises, there were accusations of predatory behaviour.
When the hearing panel cancelled the establishment’s liquor licence it said the men took a group of teenage girls to a locked room full of middle-aged men who made unwanted sexual advances towards them.
The girls’ phones were taken from them and the blinds were pulled as the bar staff were knowingly breaching Covid rules.
The girls left after the doors were unlocked by a staff member as the men were making plans to take them all to another location, the decision said.
The renewal had been opposed by police, Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand’s medical officer of health, the licensing inspector and Students for Sensible Drug Policy Dunedin.
Police opposition to the licence renewal was based on the nightclub’s negative effect on the "amenity and good order" of the central Dunedin area and concerns about breaching conditions of the licence, intoxicated people at the premises, disregard of Covid regulations regarding gatherings of people, and a disregard of food safety regulations.
