Look who’s back..and still owing a King’s ransom
Scotland’s biggest bankrupt surfaces after going bust more than 6 years ago
INSOLVENCY EXPERTS ARE TRACKING DOWN HIS ASSETS Scotland’s biggest bankrupt Gregory King is pictured in public for the first time since he went bust more than six years ago.
The controversial ex- lawyer went under in 2017 with estimated personal debts of about £120million after the collapse of his hedge fund firm Heather Capital.
A trail of financial victims has been left across the globe with King keeping a low profile as insolvency experts hunted for his assets.
But the Sunday Mail has tracked him down to a modest flat in the Giffnock area in the south side of Glasgow.
It’s tiny in comparison to the vast homes once enjoyed by King before his bankruptcy.
Adrian Hyde, of corporate recovery experts Begbies Traynor, said its investigations were now concentrating on assets l inked to King in Scotland and Gibraltar.
He added: “There is going to be another payment to creditors before the end of the year.”
Before going bust, King, 55, was said to have enjoyed a lavish lifestyle including a l u x u r y home in Ma r b e l l a a nd a Mercedes, Range Rover and several HarleyDavidson motor bikes.
He l ived in the exclusive La Zagaleta development onn the outskirts of the town in southern Spain where houses can cost up to £20million, with Russian president Vladimir
Putin rumoured to own a property there.
When a Sunday Mail reporter approached King at his flat last week as he stepped out of a Mini, he refused to discuss the ongoing search by liquidators for his assets before entering the building.
In January we revealed that a property l inked to privatelyy educated King had been seized inn nearby Whitecraigs.
The four- bedroom home wass bought by a Gibraltar-based property firm in 2008 for £1million.
In October, liquidators Begbies Traynor took possession of the home, which was then put up for sale at offers over £ 675,000 with any sale proceeds going to pay off King’s debts.
Begbies Traynor has also been targeting other parts of a multi-million pound property empire linked to King.
Last year it recovered and sold a £5.5million Marbella hilltop villa in La Zagaleta occupied by one of his relatives.
Begbies lawyers claimed the property in the La Zagaleta area had been bought using Heather Capital linked cash given to him by King. The luxury home neighbours another villa which was seized in 2018 and sold for £5.1million, of which £ 2 million has since been returned to creditors.
King launched Heather Capital in 2005, which attracted about £400million from investors to develop wasteland and derelict bui ldings in central Scotland. But in 2010 the Gibraltarbased company col lapsed with investors’ cash unaccounted for and the sites lying empty.
An Isle of Man court judgment compared Heather Capital to a Ponzi scheme made famous by jailed New York financier Bernie Madoff.
Ponzis work by using cash from new investors to make bogus returns for earlier investors, giving the illusion of success. Police launched a fraud probe into Heather Capital in 2013, which resulted in King and three men being reported to the Crown Office before the case was dropped in 2018. King has always denied any wrongdoing.
Last week we revealed that King’s father Hugh King has been forced to sell his £2million luxury family home after he was made bankrupt by a nephew.
Bookmaker Billy King Jr raised legal proceedings against his 82-year- old uncle after lending him more than £ 400,000 in 2019. When
Hugh failed to pay Billy, 59, back by an agreed deadl ine, the younger businessman won an action at Paisley Sheriff Court in January to sequestrate his relative for the outstanding sum of £ 448,251.
Insolvency experts William Duncan were then appointed as trustees, with the power to sell off Hugh’s assets to repay the debt.
Last month his 125-year-old B-listed two-storey home in Whitecraigs was put up for sale by estate agent Savills at offers over £2million.
The house was originally bought by the retired bookmaker and his wife Deirdrie, 80, in 1994 for £ 475,000.
The proceeds of the sale will be used to pay off the debt owed to Billy King Jnr and any other creditors.
In 2008 Gregory King was awarded a papal knighthood after he donated cash to rebuild a Vatican embassy in Belgrade and for other charity work.
The Kings were one of the most successful business families in Scotland.
Gregory’s nephew Stefan King, 61, owns the Glasgow based entertainment industry giant Scotsman Group.