Landbanker link to giant housing plan
Developer ‘doesn’t know’ greenbelt conman, but shares address
HAS the curse of Britain’s most notorious landbanking scammer struck again?
Baljinder “Bally” Chohan was the man behind UK Land Investment which ripped off investors to the tune of £69million.
They paid him for plots of greenbelt fields after being promised that the value would rocket when they got planning permission for housing.
That never happened and 43-yearold Chohan was banned from being a director of UK companies for 12 years, the High Court hearing that he told “outright lies” to investors.
Now a council is trying to build a huge new housing estate on one of the sites used in Chohan’s scam.
Tandridge District Council has picked some strange bedfellows for the wildly unpopular project planned for the village of Godstone in the Surrey greenbelt.
In order to finance and market the scheme it formed a partnership with a private company, Bonnar Allan Limited, which was put into compulsory liquidation over unpaid debts in September.
Now the council is working with Cam Godstone Limited.
The sole director is Kulvinder Nagha, who lives in a house in West Drayton, West London, that Bally Chohan used as his address when he set up UK Land Investment.
When I met Ms Nagha she told me that she does not know Chohan.
“To be honest I do not want to say anything,” she said.
“My lawyer’s dealing with the whole of this. I really don’t want any controversy.” She said that Cam Godstone was now pulling out and the project would be taken over by a British company called Eco Habitat, but I could find no record of it listed at Companies House.
Things don’t get any clearer with Claremont Asset Management, another of the council’s private sector partners.
It is registered in the Seychelles and owned by Bentley and Mane in the British Virgin Islands. This lot promise
investors “Safe-haven property geared to deliver excellent returns” and under the “Deals concluded” section of its online brochure it features projects including one called Aldgate Heights in London.
This is in fact Aldgate Place and it was built by Barratt Homes, which told me: “We have absolutely no connection to Bentley and Mane and they shouldn’t be using our images.” Bentley and Mane has not responded to my emails asking who controls it and whether Bally Chohan has any involvement.
When I rang, a woman who refused to give her name told me to speak to the company’s lawyers, London firm Devonshires.
This is the same firm that Kulvinder Nagha told me is acting for Cam Godstone Limited, and it hasn’t answered my emails either.
The plans for the 4,000 homes in Godstone are so unpopular locally that the Conservatives in this true blue heartland were thrashed in May’s local elections, their candidate getting just 423 votes to the 1,305 won by the independent candidate Chris Farr.
Mr Farr said residents felt betrayed, adding: “The first developer went bankrupt, and the new promoter appears to be questionable to say the least, with questions around potential links to a land scam of a decade ago.”
David Hughes of the Tandrige Lane Action Group said: “The council has totally failed to demonstrate that it has either maximised opportunities to build on brownfield land, or maximised opportunities for development in existing urban and semi-urban areas.
“Instead it has become fixated with delivering a new town in the greenbelt, even though this is a highly unsustainable proposal.”
In a statement Tandridge District Council insisted: “The Council is required by national policy to enable the delivery of development to meet housing need.”
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The council has become fixated with a new town in green belt