25 February 2024 , 15:04
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A nan who has been left to live in a caravan after losing thousands to a housing development group says her life has been "devastated".
Juliet Ignatiev, 64, from Southport, invested £31,000 in a buy-to-let apartment as part of the Kingsway House project on Hatton Garden in Liverpool city centre. She had intended to move to Australia, where her children and grandchildren now live, and had planned to live off the proceeds of her investment.
But she has now lost all the money she invested. The development group wanted to convert city centre office buildings into apartments. The group is well known in Liverpool for buying up historic buildings and doing them up into luxury hotels, bespoke wedding venues and party-themed apartments. It was run by a husband and wife team, Lawrence and Katie Kenwright, who went bankrupt last month.
On Wednesday, the Serious Fraud Office announced it is carrying out a £140m fraud investigation into the Signature group, having raided three properties and made four arrests. The latest update from the SFO stated: “All four individuals have been released pending further investigation.”
About the investigation into Signature, Nick Ephgrave QPM, director of the Serious Fraud Office, said: “The scheme offered attractive returns and used much-loved local landmarks to lure investors.
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“We have people up and down the country left out of pocket, and buildings left derelict at the centre of our cities. Today’s arrests and searches will help us reconstruct exactly what happened. This is now an active criminal investigation.”
Juliet said that she is among those people left out of pocket. She told the ECHO : “I sold my house originally and wanted to go and live with my daughter and grandchildren in Australia. I was going to live off the income of a buy-to-let property. In 2019, I contacted an agent who told me that Hatton Garden would be my dream property. He said in email that it would be available, according to Mr Kenwright, to let out in January 2020.
“I thought that was brilliant, I thought I would be able to start getting my rent and live off it. I saw all the glossy brochures and went up to visit the site. It did look like a building site at the time but I was just persuaded that there were a few delays and it was all going ahead fine, my apartment would be ready. He recommended using a conveyancer who had worked a lot with Mr Kenwright.”
Juliet’s sale agreement, which she shared with the ECHO, showed that the reservation fee was £5,000 and the deposit was £26,087.50. In total, the purchase price was £207,250. She said that she paid the reservation fee in January 2020 and then the deposit in March 2020, meaning that she had exchanged on the apartment.
The sales agreement had a longstop date of March 31, 2021. This is the date that conditions must be right for completion to take place. However, the agreement said that the longstop date could be extended by 12 months “where the Seller is prevented from completing by acts of God, war or terrorism or any other matter or thing not wholly within its control”.
Juliet says she kept waiting to see progress after she exchanged. She said that the longstop date was extended by 12 months due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was said to constitute an ‘act of God’ and affected the construction industry.
This meant that Juliet’s wait to see any return from her investment went on. She became increasingly worried that the development may not happen.
She said: "There I was with no available money, no home, no work. I'd given everything up to go to Australia. I kept waiting, we had another visit to the site in August. I talked to Mr Kenwright's agent, who told me that the project had stalled because Mr Kenwright had diverted our workforce to Old Hall Street (another of his Signature Group projects), to bring that out of administration. He also said that all of our deposits had gone into construction.
“And then, my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer, so I started getting carers' income. But it was incredibly distressing, the whole thing. It hurt my mum to see how hurt I was - the whole thing was just awful and it dragged on and on and on.
Juliet said she was served with a completion notice in November 2021, with building regulations said to be signed off. She claims that she was then asked for the full sum, which took her by surprise as she did not believe that the development was actually complete.
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She then decided to rescind her investment. A spreadsheet sent to the ECHO by Juliet appears to show that she had successfully rescinded her investment and was owed a total of £31,587.67. She says she has not received that and is £31,000 out of pocket.
Juliet said: “I can remember walking up and down on the deck outside my caravan and then thinking 'well at least I've got the children'. It was that bad that I literally wanted not to wake up the next morning. My life was devastated. It's been three years of heartache and sleepless nights.”
Juliet now lives in a caravan in Devon, having sold her house with the intention of moving to Australia and living from the proceeds of her investment. She claims that she has made a number of attempts to contact Mr Kenwright and his associates, to no avail.
She said: “I'm obsessed with it. The amount of times that I have called them, left voicemails. I've emailed. I've got absolutely nothing back, there's been no response at all. I wanted some sort of response and explanation. I just felt totally powerless.”
The Liverpool Echo has made repeated attempts to contact Mr Kenwright for comment.