‘My life collapsed, I have nothing’ Downfall of one of city’s most colourful businessmen revealed on TV
THE former boss of a Birmingham lapdancing club has seen his life “fall apart” after he lost a high-profile court case over a small strip of land.
Businessman Allan Sartori was “shell-shocked” in April 2014 when a judge ruled that he no longer owned the lucrative land outside the Rocket Club, in Broad Street, following a torturous legal battle.
This week Mr Sartori’s desperate situation since then was exposed in a Channel 5 TV documentary, Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away.
In the programme the former club boss was confronted by High Court debt collectors demanding £25,000 in unpaid solicitor fees.
Mr Sartori tells them he was unable to pay the debt because his life had fallen apart since the costly court case and he was now living on benefits.
The businessman was well-known in the city for his involvement in the Rocket Club and the former Ronnie Scott’s music venue on the same site.
He rose to prominence as one of the former owners of Ronnie Scott’s until its collapse in 2002.
He claimed to have lost £800,000 in the doomed venture but later went on to front the Rocket Club, becoming one of the city’s more colourful business characters.
In the TV documentary, officers are seen arriving at his home to collect the unpaid fees following the loss of his long-running legal battle.
During the episode he refuses to come out and speak to officers. Instead they spot him through a glass front door trying to hide and even crawling on his hands and knees to avoid them.
Mr Sartori then calls police inside, telling them: “I’ve not got £25,000. I live here in a rented room.
“I’ve got nothing. Look bank.”
He adds: “My life collapsed about five or six years ago in a big court case. I’ve got no money left. I’m living on benefits.”
Mr Sartori was given two days to come up with the cash and officers later returned – but failed to make contact. The programme said the at my case against him was the claimant decided worth pursuing.
It is a stark riches-to-rags story for Mr Sartori, who came unstuck following the legal dispute with former business partner Laurence Reddy.
The firm Balevents, owned by Mr Reddy’s family, had argued that the disputed piece of pavement belonged to the club rather than its former manager.
In the 2014 case Mr Justice Morgan criticised both Mr Sartori and Mr Reddy as unreliable witnesses – and effectively restored the land to Birmingham City Council. The pair previously had strong business ties after Mr Reddy became a partner in the Rocket Club but later fell out. Mr Sartori successfully claimed ownership of the land in 2009.
At an initial High Court trial in 2011 Lord Justice Kinchin ruled Mr Sartori was the rightful owner of the closed when it was not land and was entitled to a income of around £1,000 a from a fast food hut on the site.
But judges sitting in the Appeal Court later ordered a retrial.
After the 2014 case Mr Sartori, then aged 64, said: “I am shellshocked. I have to come to terms with this. rental week
“This has been going on for four years and it had to come to an end some time. Mr Justice Morgan is extinguishing the title.
“We tried to come to an agreement with Reddy but you can’t. I am glad it is all over, all this over a small strip of land. He has not won, I have not won.
“He wants that land but he has not got it.
“This leaves me finished, out of it – I can’t do any more. I have got to retrench and think about how things are. The title is extinguished and the land has gone back to the original people who owned it, the city council.”
In his judgment, Mr Justice Morgan criticised both parties.
“I did not find Mr Reddy or Mr Sartori to be reliable witnesses,” he said. “On the central issue as to whether Mr Reddy’s involvement in the events of 2009, which led to Mr Sartori applying for, and obtaining, a possessory title to the disputed land, I am not able to accept Mr Reddy’s evidence.
“Mr Sartori was also an unreliable witness. Mr Sartori had a real difficulty in distinguishing what actually happened from what he would have liked to have happened.” for himself