Executives and dignitaries cheered; investors got some needed encouragement.

It was early September 2016 and developer Richard Turner had invited the then-mayor to tee-up his bold plan for a six-star Thai-style hotel, shops and hundreds of apartments at Brookwater, a new suburb in the Ipswich council area on former grazing land 25 kilometres south-west of Brisbane.

A couple of months earlier, the pair had spent time together in Singapore and Bangkok, being entertained by luxury hotel chain Dusit Thani, which was lined up to run the Brookwater resort.

More than a year later, nothing has been built. Mum-and-dad investors in the scheme have started to ask why, and want reassurance that millions of dollars of their hard-earned money, paid in deposits of up to $160,000 a pop, is safe.

But Fairfax Media can reveal that even back at the 2016 launch ceremony, the glitz concealed some awkward facts.

Unknown to most of the guests, two days earlier, the scheme's main creditor, the Hunt Group, had taken possession of the site and fenced most of it off, hiring security guards to secure it, after Mr Turner's company had failed to make interest payments.

By the time of the ceremony, Mr Turner had hired his own guards to keep the Hunt Group's guards at bay and to try to ensure the launch went off without incident. He was forced to stage the event at the edge of the site, parking Mr Pisasale's excavator just in front of the fence put up by the creditors.

As guests chatted and smiled, two opposing crews of security guards squared off behind them.

One executive who was present told Fairfax Media: "A reporter noticed all the security guards and asked whether it was because the event might get disrupted by ???green' protestors. I said, ???yeah, that's it,' and they just said, ???oh, right'."

Two days after the ceremony, Hunt Group served official papers on Mr Turner informing him it was putting his company into receivership.

Local media asked Mr Turner if the scheme was in financial difficulties. He dismissed the matter as "just a small hiccup". Investors hadn't contacted him and he did not expect they would, he explained.

But the launch, with its secret manoeuvrings behind the scenes, was emblematic of wider problems with the scheme and its developer.

Mr Turner organised the ceremony at short notice after Springfield Land put pressure on him to show progress on the resort project, according to company sources.

His repeated claims that construction was imminent had proved to be wishful thinking.

Springfield wanted the scheme built - and still does - to shore up its other investments on surrounding land. It is also understood to have been looking for a way to offload its highly rated but loss-making Greg Norman-designed golf course.

But property industry observers are starting to question why the group has provided so much support to Mr Turner, continuing to host regular planning meetings with him even after his company collapsed.

Mr Turner's track record with previous companies also raises questions.

The website for his British company World Group LLC UK Ltd, through which Mr Turner initiated the Brookwater scheme, claims it has been responsible for dozens of hotel and resort schemes in Australia, Asia and the Middle East.

It also claims it has "ongoing relationships" with range of global organisations including the World Bank, NATO and the Arab League.

But records at Companies House in London, available free over the internet, show World Group and its successor, Austral-Asia World LLC UK Ltd, are both one-pound companies listed officially as "dormant" with no records of trading. UK authorities have issued both with "show cause" notices in recent months after they failed to present accounts on time.

Official records show neither company has filed accounts since 2015 and the latest accounts for both entities are six months overdue.

World Group's website claims it is developing "Brisbane Centrale", a multi-use development on Brisbane's Caxton Street. But there are no other records of any such scheme.

The resort company receivership was widely reported at the time, but it has taken a year for investors to begin asking hard questions of Mr Turner, whose companies hold about $10 million in deposits raised by selling apartments in a development where they have apparently lost control of the land.

There may have been a reluctance until now to complain too loudly on the part of some of the scheme's 80 or so Vietnamese investors, who face legal constraints at home on exporting capital for real estate purchases.

But at least some investors want to know where their cash, required by law to be held in trust in Australia until the scheme is completed, is being held. Lawyers acting for buyers have been asking the developer and his solicitors about it, without success.

When contacted by Fairfax Media, Mr Turner denied any wrongdoing through his solicitors, Gold Coast firm Hickey Lawyers, stating: "All sales have, to the best of our client's knowledge, been made according to the relevant laws that regulate the sale of proposed lots."

"All deposit monies provided to this firm are held in a trust as required by law and invested as permitted by law," they said.

Buyers have rights to appoint a liquidator to freeze the developer's assets if there are concerns about their deposits.

One executive who attended sales events for the resort in Vietnam said local buyers did not understand the concept of due diligence and didn't use cheques or bank transfers.

"They turn up on a moped with a bag of cash," he said.

"The cash was just sitting in piles on the beds in the hotel rooms we hired," said another involved in the sales. "We realised we had no way of handling it so we had to set up bank accounts over there."

Legal expert Matthew Raven at Gadens Solicitors said there was nothing unlawful in a vendor contracting with buyers over land they planned to own in the future, as long as they had not misrepresented their ability to achieve this.

The problem for Mr Turner is the new owners of the land have had no contact with him and want to develop the site without him.

"I've never seen (development pre-sales) where there wasn't a right to buy (the land)," Mr Raven said.

Fairfax Media has interviewed a number of staff with knowledge of Mr Turner's operations, some of whom say they raised concerns with authorities, including Ipswich City Council, that something was amiss as early as August 2015.

Queensland's Office of Fair Trading says it took enforcement action against Mr Turner's company prior to the receivership in 2016 but won't provide details.

The site's new owners have told Fairfax Media they plan to develop it themselves.

Ipswich could yet get its luxury golf resort. But Mr Turner and his 160 or so investors look likely to remain stuck in the sand.