Two friends have been convicted of conspiring to defraud banks of hundreds of millions of pounds during a five-year property and luxury yacht scam.
Achilleas Kallakis and Alexander Williams, both 44 and from London, tried to swindle Allied Irish Banks (AIB) out of £740 million and Bank of Scotland (BOS), as it was known, of £22m between August 2003 and November 2008.
The jury was told Kallakis used the proceeds of his fraud to fund the lifestyle of the super-rich with a fleet of chauffeur-driven Bentleys, a private plane, a private helicopter, a luxury yacht moored in Monaco harbour and a collection of high-value artworks.
The pair were convicted at Southwark Crown Court of two counts of conspiring to defraud the banks after a four-month trial. They will be sentenced today.
The men used forged documents as part of their plot to use AIB money to buy properties and BOS cash to convert an former passenger ferry into a super yacht, the court heard. The loss to AIB was more than £56m and £4.8m to BOS.
The duo, who both used various aliases, operated from London business premises in Mayfair, where Kallakis masqueraded as a legitimate property tycoon and Williams a financial consultant.
The pair defrauded AIB by using the forged or false documents to obtain substantial loans to finance the purchase of what was mostly a commercial property portfolio.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article