Manchester property developer and businessman Dermot Craven (44) was not at home when The Irish Times called to his three-storey, seven-bedroom home in the exclusive village of Bowdon, Cheshire, yesterday.
A housekeeper who opened the door said neither Mr Craven nor his wife Dawn were at home and she did not know when they would be returning. The couple live in the house with their three children.
The detached house is about half a mile from the home of footballer Roy Keane.
Attempts to contact Mr Craven through the offices of the Craven Group yesterday were also unsuccessful. A woman who answered the phone said there would be no comment.
Brian Pepper (34), a Manchester-based businessman who is involved in a number of property companies and partnerships with Mr Craven, was also unavailable yesterday. A man who answered the phone at his home said Mr Pepper did not wish to discuss the affairs of the Craven Group. He would not identify himself.
Officers from the Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) visited the homes of both Mr Craven and Mr Pepper on Thursday. They also visited the offices of the Craven Group and took away a large amount of documentation and other material.
In an interview with the Manchester Evening News in December 2000, Mr Craven said he had a workforce of 54 and that his combined businesses had a turnover of £2 million.
He said he was one of 12 children brought up in a council estate house by their oldest sister, following the deaths of their mother from cancer and their father from a heart attack.
He left school at 15 and began working as a scaffolder at 19. He soon branched out on his own, having bought a van and some equipment, and using a caravan as an office. His first foray into the property business was when he bought a house and converted it into flats. Most of his properties are understood to be small- and medium-sized residential properties in the greater Manchester area.
"We convert houses into flats and renovate commercial property as well." He said the group had property worth £15 million.
While some Craven companies are 100 per cent owned by Mr Craven, others are owned jointly with Mr Pepper. Mr Pepper, who has addresses in Manchester and in Dundalk according to the UK Companies House records, was fined £300 in Dublin District Court in December 2001 for threatening an Aer Lingus pilot during a flight from Manchester to Dublin. The court was told Mr Pepper repeatedly failed to turn off his phone when asked to do so by air stewardesses.
It also heard that after the pilot, Capt Aengus Ó Fearghail, intervened for a second time, Mr Pepper threatened him with his fist and warned: "I will do something I might regret, I will rip your head off." Mr Pepper failed to appear in court at a first hearing to answer charges of abusive and threatening behaviour.