TONY HETHERINGTON: Buy-to-let nightmare cost me Australia move

Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.

Ms J.I. writes: I am a widowed 62-year-old.

I sold my house so I could go to Australia to be with my daughter and grandchildren, and I paid a deposit of £26,000 on a buy-to-let apartment in Kingsway House in Liverpool.

Conversion of this office building to apartments was due for completion in March 2020, but more than two years later I am still waiting.

Failure: Lawrence Kenwright and the unfinished Kingsway House

Tony Hetherington replies: This is a real horror story. After the developers failed to complete the conversion, you told them you were pulling out of the contract and wanted your deposit refunded. Instead, late last year, they demanded that you pay the balance of more than £184,000. Meanwhile, you have been left living in a mobile home, still in England rather than Australia.

The conversion work is supposedly being carried out by Kingsway SLG Limited, a company headed by controversial Liverpool businessman Lawrence Kenwright, who has overseen a number of other similarly disrupted projects in the city, as well as in Manchester and Belfast.

Kingsway SLG’s sales agent told you in January 2020 that your apartment would be completed in March of that year. It wasn’t, and in September 2020 he viewed the building and told you the developers ‘have deliberately misled us’. Major building work was unfinished and there was no way tenants could move in. Despite all this, Kenwright’s solicitors claimed last November that your apartment is ‘ready for occupation’, and they demanded that you pay the balance of the purchase price. But their claim was false. According to Merseyside Fire Service, the building did not meet fire safety regulations.

Worse still, Liverpool City Council found that Kenwright has carried out unauthorised work not allowed by the planning permission he was granted. Part of Kingsway House, including the ground floor, was supposed to remain as commercial premises, but Kenwright allegedly began building more apartments without planning consent.

I visited the building recently, and although a sign on the main door suggested that residents were admitted, there was no sign of any, the door was locked, and there was evidence of unfinished building work. I asked Kenwright and his lawyers – Liverpool-based MSB Solicitors – to comment. The solicitors told me they were in touch with Kenwright and would get back to me with their comments. Since then, silence.

Liverpool City Council, in contrast, has been very open. When its building control department found out about the unauthorised work, it asked Kenwright’s company to make a proper application if it wanted to stand a chance of legalising it. A spokesman for the council told me: ‘Building control has received no response to date and we are about to instigate formal enforcement proceedings against Kingsway SLG Limited.’

While it is possible that some individual apartments may be complete, the building itself is neither complete nor safe, so no apartments can be occupied. Council officials gained access to Kingsway House for an inspection ten days ago, and one told me: ‘There is no evidence of any occupation. We still need a retrospective planning application. Without this, safety regulations cannot be signed off.’

Against this background, why should you pay a penny more to people who make false claims, break planning laws, and risk tenants’ safety? But given Kenwright’s record of failed projects and collapsed companies, you may be lucky to recover your deposit. Land Registry records show Kingsway House is heavily mortgaged, so even if you sue his company and win, it may already not have the money to pay you.

I switched from Evolve but now owe British Gas £550

N.C. writes: I have been with British Gas Evolve on a 12-month fix, paying £79 a month. Recently it announced it was being amalgamated with British Gas, but the systems could not cope.

I was underpaying, but it was impossible to increase the payments.

Tony Hetherington replies: You told me problems began in April, when you switched to the British Gas variable tariff and found you had a debit balance of about £250. You wanted to pay more, but you were told there was a ‘technical issue’ that needed to be fixed.

In May, British Gas seemed to have solved this, and you were warned that your monthly payments would increase from £79 to £175. You were happy to pay, but instead of collecting £175, British Gas stopped collecting anything at all. And now it has held you responsible, saying you owe £550.

I asked British Gas to look into this and it quickly managed to restart your direct debits. It also called you to apologise and offer £90 as a goodwill gesture for the worry caused. Other British Gas Evolve customers should check immediately as the same fault may have affected them, and they may innocently be running up big debts.

We’re watching you

A career conman who offered big profits from trading in gold has been banned from acting as a company director for the next 14 years after helping to cheat investors out of £360,000.

Benedict Moruthoane, who also uses at least three other names, was a behind-thescenes boss of Sutter Capital Limited, which offered returns of 15 to 22 per cent from what were said to be successful gold deals in Africa.

The business operated illegally, with no authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority, and it ceased trading at the end of 2018. Investigators from the Insolvency Service found that its sales material contained inaccurate claims, and high-risk investment bonds were sold to unsuitable investors. The company’s accounts showed almost all its money was spent on salaries, expenses and sales commissions, with no trace of gold trading.

On paper, Sutter Capital was run by its sole director Eugeniu Sculea, 33, from Moldova. Last year, he accepted an 11-year ban as a director. Now the High Court has ruled that Moruthoane, 50, who has British and Lesotho nationality, acted as a hidden director of the company. His 14- year ban from boardrooms began last Tuesday.

Moruthoane, from Finchley in North London, has been on my radar for more than a decade. He set up the Bordeaux Wine Company and was its sole director until signing it over to a colleague who later told me she never, in fact, ran the business, explaining, ‘I remained an employee and had no operational control.’ In 2019, I reported that wine worth millions of pounds was unaccounted for, and the company collapsed.

Meanwhile, Moruthoane had set up International Wine Commodities Limited, part of a group of three businesses which sold fine wine as an investment. They traded for three years and reportedly raked in £2million but only ever bought one case of wine. In 2011, Moruthoane was jailed for seven and a half years for fraud.

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email [email protected]. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.