Legal News

Two businessmen, Achilleas Michaelis Kallakis (44) and Alexander Martin Williams (44), both from London were found guilty in £740 million property fraud have been remanded to custody and will be sentenced today and their assets would be confiscated.

The fraud had helped Kallakis to acquire a 16 property portfolio amounting to £740 million.

The duo had used deception and forgery to get finances from banks running into millions of pounds and Euros.
A third person, Michael Becker, a lawyer and businessman who was based in Switzerland at that time was also alleged to have conspired with the defendants. He presented loan agreements to the banks but was not charged due to him being a Swiss national and absent from the UK.
Kallakis and Williams operated out of a Mayfair office as the Pacific Group of Companies. Over a five-year period between 2003 and 2008 they defrauded Allied Irish Banks (AIB) by using forged and false documents or claims in order to obtain substantial loans to finance the purchase of what was mostly a commercial property portfolio.
The transactions were structured in a way that the bank loans exceeded the purchase price of the properties. It was achieved by providing the bank with a guarantee from a Hong Kong company, Sun Hung Kai Properties Limited (SHKP), a large established Hong Kong property company with a credit rating having the ability to increase the value of the properties.
The suspected fraud was reported to the SFO by SHKP and AIB. An investigation, supported by the City of London Police, began in January 2009.
The defendants’ London residences and their Mayfair office were searched in March 2009 and the pair were charged in February 2010. They appeared at the City of London Magistrates Court in March 2010 where the case was transferred to Southwark Crown Court for trial which opened in September 2011 presided over by HHJ Goymer.
The jury in that trial was discharged due to the illness of one of the defendants and on retrial in September 2012 jury found Kallakis guilty of fraud which funded his lavish lifestyle
However the jury in that trial was discharged due to the illness of one of the defendants and a retrial opened in September 2012.
The jury returned unanimous verdicts on two counts of conspiracy to defraud. One count related to Allied Irish Banks and the other to Bank of Scotland.
Both men were found to have had previously convicted of four offences of deception in relation to obtaining of false passports and in creating and selling bogus certificates conferring honorary titles and used the same forgery skills to execute fraud against the banks.