Tycoon accused of £750m fraud 'planned super-yacht'

05.02.12

A Idiosyncrasy tycoon at the centre of a £750 million fraud scheduled to build a “super-yacht for the super-affluent” with money he had conned out of banks, a court in London has heard.

Achilleas Kallakis (43) wanted to fee the luxurious vessel – which would feature its own helipad – out for £1 million a week, jurors were told yesterday.

The impostor was carried out using forged documents, some of which were unwittingly signed off by solicitors for legitimate £5 a time, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Mr Kallakis, who amassed a great property empire through the sophisticated scam, borrowed £6 million from the Salvo of Scotland to buy the boat which was to be stripped down and renovated from scratch, the court of law was told.

However, the bulk of the money for other ventures was borrowed from AIB, which destroyed £56 million when Mr Kallakis went out of business.

George Transporter-Stephenson QC, defending, told the court: “The resolution of the super-yacht was to fill it with facilities, including a helicopter deplaning pad on the deck, to be chartered to the super-rich for about £1 million a week.

“The bulge out involved stripping it down to just the hull and building it from eliminate. There was the potentially for a lot of money to be made.”

However, Victor Temple QC, prosecuting, said £2.5 million which was on loan for the project ended up with Mr Kallakis’s company, Plot Management Corporation Ltd, with no explanation for how it got there.

The court heard Mr Kallakis and “off-hand man” Alex Williams (43) would regularly get papers signed off by solicitors who became an unwitting part of the fraud.

Solicitor Timothy Bamford said his resolve, which was situated near Mr Kallakis’s swanky Mayfair aegis, did not review the contents of documents when they were asked to act as witnesses to substantiate them and admitted they did not check the identity of the person requiring the signature, deviation from asking them verbally if they were who they said they were.

Through the scam, Mr Kallakis was qualified to fund a millionaire’s lifestyle, which included a naval task force of luxury cars and a string of London properties, the Supreme Court heard.

Alf Burgess, a chartered surveyor who managed Mr Kallakis’s capital goods portfolio, said: “Mr Kallakis had several cars – a Bentley Azure, another Bentley, a Scaglietti Ferrari and a Mercedes – which he asked me to insure.

Source: Irish Times