ALLIED IRISH Bank was “desperate” to lend £750 million to controversial businessman Achilleas Kallakis to fund his expansive UK property portfolio, a court in London was told yesterday.

Mr Kallakis told the jury at Southwark crown court that representatives of AIB “constantly” put pressure on him to find new deals they could help finance.

AIB invested in 16 “high-profile” buildings with Mr Kallakis. But when his property empire collapsed, the bank lost £56 million (€67 million).

Mr Kallakis and his right-hand man, Alex Williams (both 43), are accused of lying about the former’s vast personal wealth and forging lease agreements to secure loans for high-profile properties.

Prosecutors allege the pair forged documents for rent guarantors and misrepresented who would be the beneficiaries of the loans. Mr Kallakis claims he had secured the loans and was acting as a chief adviser for a family trust.

He claims the trust’s sole beneficiaries were his children and that it was controlled by Swiss lawyer Michael Becker. But prosecutors allege he exaggerated his personal wealth and forged guarantee agreements to secure the money.

Yesterday Mr Kallakis said the bank was so “desperate” to get deals done during the height of the property boom that it made a number of “incorrect assumptions” about his circumstances without his knowledge.

George Carter-Stephenson, representing Mr Kallakis, asked his client if AIB was keen to do business. Mr Kallakis replied: “Keen is not the word I would use. They were desperate, anxious and overwhelmingly interested to enter a deal with us. They were constantly calling us about finance deals.

“We would have what would appear to be these friendly little lunches where they were very anxious to get over to me the fact that they were in the market, awash with cash, and anxious to get lending – basically saying ‘let’s get some deals done’.

“They put a lot of pressure on me to find properties, and, at the time, we were in the middle of a property boom, good deals were difficult to come by.

“I think they were new to the property-finance world and they were anxious to expand their lending books. They saw the trust as a good way to do that.”

Mr Kallakis said the bank and his trust were introduced to each other through brokerage firm CLP, which sent AIB all the trust deeds on who the beneficiary of the loans would be.

Mr Carter-Stephenson showed his client internal bank documents from 2003, before they made their first deal, which claimed the Kallakis family was worth billions and that Mr Kallakis himself controlled a company with a billion-pound property empire.

Mr Carter Stephenson asked where the bank would have got its information from. Mr Kallakis said: “I assume from CLP but certainly not from me. I would never and never did discuss anything concerning my personal wealth [with anyone from the bank] because, firstly, it was irrelevant. They were non-recourse loans, so the bank could not go back to an individual and say ‘there is something wrong with the loan and we want you to do something about it’.

“Secondly, my personal wealth was my personal wealth and it had nothing to do with the beneficiaries of the trust or the representatives of the bank.”

Mr Kallakis said the bank never asked him to make a formal loan application. “There were no application forms ever. Of all the loans from AIB, if they were £10 million or £250 million, we never had to sign an application form.”

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.