Master poker player Achilleas Kallakis used his skills to build a property empire based on fraud and forgery
Achilleas Kallakis was still in prison in the summer of 2014, when I wrote to ask if he fancied telling his astonishing tale. The man who had executed the biggest commercial property fraud of modern times did get in touch after his release. A letter arrived in 2019 complaining mildly of a “sensationalist” description of his crimes in my 2014 tome, Planet Property. I’d sent him a copy in the naive hope he would say yes to a tell-all book. No go.
Who could fail to admire the audacity of a man dubbed ‘The Don’ on the poker circuit? A top-ranked card player who also played the top of the property world between 2003 and 2008. A man capable of convincing you he was holding a royal flush rather than deuces.
In October 2011, I saw my hero across the room, a short, portly 44-year-old wearing a well-cut suit, red tie and plain white shirt. He was sitting with his legal team in Court 14 of Southwark Crown Court. Kallakis bustled around the court during the break, retreating to a private room to consult with his solicitors, padding back in with an armful of papers to chat with his QC, George Carter-Stephenson. Alongside him sat co-defendant Alexander Williams. The pair were accused by the Serious Fraud Office of carrying out “an audacious, persistent fraud that enabled Mr Kallakis in particular to lead the lifestyle of the super-rich”.
Chief among several banking enablers was Allied Irish Bank, which lent Kallakis £740m in all. Why? Because Hong Kong property company Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP) had guaranteed to pay the current or an even higher rent if the occupier defaulted, effectively removing the risk of tenants not renewing their leases. Kallakis somehow convinced lenders these guarantees would fall apart if they contacted SHKP directly.
At the trial, Walter Kwok of SHKP appeared by video link from Hong Kong. He told the jury he had never met with the defendants. His signature on multiple documents had been forged.
The fake guarantees helped generate a £72m valuation surplus. A further £114m put up by Allied Irish and due to be paid in in reverse premiums – incentives for SHKP – was also plundered by Kallakis and Williams.
Prosecuting barrister Victor Temple QC questioned an Allied Irish employee about their willingness to grant loans. Victor Temple: “Tell me, Mr Banker, did you take a three-day trip to Mauritius with Mr Kallakis?” Mr Banker: “Er… yes.” Victor Temple: “Tell me, Mr Banker, did that have any influence on your judgment when it came to granting loans to Mr Kallakis?” Mr Banker: “Er… no.” How the jury members smiled. Trips to the 2006 World Cup final in Berlin and a stay on his yacht in Monaco during the Grand Prix were later admitted by other bankers being courted by Kallakis.
Alexander Williams (then Martin Lewis) and Achilleas Kallakis (then Stefanos Kollakis) were convicted in 1995 for selling fake ‘lord of the manor’ titles. By 2003 Kollakis had become Kallakis, bidding on £100m-plus properties from a lavish suite near the Connaught hotel in Mayfair; doing deals under the flag of the Pacific Group, supposedly controlled by a family trust. These deals included the purchase of a property in St James’s Square that he planned to turn into a £125m house.
Then came the three really big ‘brother’ deals. He paid Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz £100m for Apollo House and Lunar House in Croydon. Then £75m to David and Simon Reuben for a tower in Vauxhall. And David and Frederick Barclay sold him the Telegraph headquarters in Victoria for £225m.
You could argue, in retrospect, about who saw whom coming. Had the sellers spotted the coming end of the boom? Either way, Kallakis could not be ignored. I wrote a now-embarrassing profile in the Evening Standard in April 2008: “You might see his chubby balding figure around a green baize table in TV studios near Maidstone, or at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas […] Kallakis is a top five European player. Last week, he also appeared in a Greek rich list, at number 11, showing a fortune of £250m.”
The fraud began to secretly unravel a month or so later, just as the market was collapsing. German bank Helaba quietly approached Allied Irish in the summer of 2008, drawing its attention to Kallakis’s conviction under another name. What?! The Irish bank hurriedly hired a private detective to investigate. On 5 September 2008 in Hong Kong, the detective discovered that the supposed guarantees from Sun Hung Kai Properties were false.
Allied Irish seized the portfolio and sold it by that December to Green Properties, an Irish property company. The deal crystallised a loss of some £60m for Allied Irish. Bank of Scotland had also been lending to Kallakis. It lost £5.8m: Kallakis almost persuaded them to lend him £29m to convert a rust-bucket ferry into a luxury yacht, and had already filched £5.8m before the bank realised it was a con.
Trial judge Andrew Goymer excoriated both banks for “acting carelessly and imprudently by failing to make full enquiries before advancing the money. It almost beggars belief senior management chose to disregard that warning and rushed to complete the deal at all costs. Both the defendants took full advantage of the prevailing banking culture in which corners are cut, and checks on them superficial and cursory.”
But the jury had to be dismissed and a trial of three months collapsed, when Williams fell ill. It began again almost a year later, in September 2012. The pair were then found guilty and sentenced to seven years in the case of Kallakis and five years in the case of Williams. Solicitor general Oliver Heald took the case to the Appeal Court, in one of the few cases where the government’s law officers seek longer sentences.
Kallakis’s sentence was increased to 11 years and that of his co-defendant, Williams, from five to eight years. Heald said: “We welcome the court’s finding that ‘the culpability of the offenders was at the highest level because they set out and persisted over a significant period with planning, determination and audacious dishonesty to commit a commercial fraud with international proportion’.
“Achilleas Kallakis was very much the ‘front man’ of the pair, enjoying a lavish lifestyle including a private jet, a helicopter, a fleet of cars and a luxury yacht. Alexander Williams was a talented forger and was responsible for the production of the false documents which were used to support the loan applications.” As that well-known developer Donald Trump once said, “You have to think anyway, so why not think big?”
Peter Bill is joint author of Broken Homes, sole author of Planet Property, and a columnist for Property Week. He is a former Editor of Building and Estates Gazette, and a one time columnist for the Evening Standard.
A man of imaginary connections
Court reporters covering the trials fell with glee on the life Kallakis led. Kallakis called himself ‘his excellency’ and claimed to be a San Marino ambassador. He bought a private jet for £27m, a helicopter for £5.2m, a luxury yacht moored in Monaco harbour and a collection of high-value art works. He owned a fleet of chauffeur-driven Bentleys, a villa in Mykonos and property in Brompton Square, Chelsea, as well as in Monaco, where he is said to have been a member of Prince Albert’s charitable foundation.
A paid-for listing on the website Who’s Who in America suggested he was a patron of the English National Ballet, a member of the development board for the National Portrait Gallery and a recipient of the Churchill Award for Excellence from the ‘Churchill Enterprise Foundation’ – all exaggerations or fabrications. Banks were provided with bogus references from the economist
Lord Harris of High Cross, the former director of the Thatcherite think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs. Lord Harris’s widow gave evidence at the trial, insisting she knew nothing of the purported family friendship Kallakis claimed.
Kallakis clung to claims that his connections to establishment figures were genuine. His lawyers showed the jury a picture of the fraudster with Lady Thatcher which had appeared in a magazine produced by the American Chamber of Commerce in the UK. One of the few genuine connections Kallakis was able to build upon was that of his family link to wealthy Greek shipping tycoon Pantelis ‘Lou’ Kollakis, his uncle. But when Lou Kollakis eventually attended a meeting with concerned AIB bankers in 2008 he told them he had no idea about the fictional business his nephew had persuaded the bank was real.
