AN ALLEGED fraudster used a special document containing Chinese letters to help bolster a £740 million scam involving AIB, a London court heard yesterday
A document entitled October 28 2003 found at the Mayfair offices of Achilleas Kallakis and his co-defendant Alexander Williams was used to provide Chinese symbols for a multitude of documents, it was said.
Among the alleged forgeries discovered at the offices were minutes of meetings from Hong Kong-based property company Sun Hung Kai Properties, jurors heard.
The documents were discovered after the Serious Fraud Office raided the Mayfair offices of Mr Kallakis and Mr Williams in March 2009. Mr Kallakis and Mr Williams are accused of faking guarantees from SHKP in order to secure £740 million in loans from AIB, with the guarantee also boosting the amount they could borrow.
Julia Ambler, an investigator at the Serious Fraud Office, told jurors at Southwark Crown Court of the significance of the 2003 document. She explained: “If you don’t give the document a title it automatically defaults to the first line of the document.
“It seems to be a stock document which appears throughout to provide the Chinese characters used for items such as acknowledgements of receipt.”
Looking through complex data found at the office, Ms Ambler also noted the “surprising” times which some documents had been modified.
Asked by prosecutor Annabel Darlow “if it would be fair to say that these documents were being modified after office hours?” Ms Amber answered: “Yes – a surprising number were being annotated well into the evening and right into two or three o’clock in the morning.” Earlier in the hearing, Ms Darlow had told jurors how another document containing a list of Chinese names had also been found at the offices of SHKP, last “authored” in the name of Alexander Williams in February 2004.
George Carter-Stephenson QC, representing Mr Kallakis, also highlighted an alleged oversight on the part of the fraud office after raiding the offices of Mr Kallakis and Mr Williams.
Cross-examining fraud office lawyer Jenny Clarke, he asked: “When did you first become aware that there had been a complete failure to seize the servers or take digital images of them?”
Ms Clarke answered: “It would have been much later.”
Mr Kallakis and Mr Williams both deny two counts of conspiracy to defraud, 13 counts of forgery, five counts of fraud by false representation, two counts of money-laundering and one count of obtaining a money transfer by deception.
The trial continues.
