WITHOUT PREJUDICE
Cyprus Property Victims – Beware of Cowboy Builders
I watched the programme last night and sadly saw all the all ‘cons’ where property sales in Cyprus is concerned.
Cyprus | Beware! Cowboy Builders | Channel 5
http://www.channel5.com/shows/cowboy-builders/episodes/cyprus
In Cyprus, Dom and Gabrielle come to the aid of a couple left with rot and subsidence after their builder
An English couple who bought off plan from a home grown British cowboy Adrian Mills trading as M D E Nest Homes in the ROC. This tale starts in 2005 and continues to date.
Basically it was a villa that should have had retaining walls built before the villa was built, the builder failed to wait for building permits, built it without the walls, built it on shifting soil, left a mountain of shifting soil dug out during excavation near the villa and the obvious happened. Coupled with no provision for damp and you had the recipe for disaster.
Adrian Mills took over £1,600,000 on two sites, one in Nata Village just above Paphos and one just across the valley from Nata in Choletaria also in the Pahos District.
It was, or so it appeared in my humble opinion, the usual mix of an inefficient, accommodating lawyer, a very accommodating bank who on one occasion allowed a name to be changed on the bankers draft and the money to be paid into the builder’s personal account rather than the business account of the building company as intended.
Although £600,000 of the £1,600.000 was paid by purchasers on the Choletaria site, there was never any building work done there.
Following criminal court appearances for issuing ‘rubber’ cheques Mr Mills legged it back to the UK where he now lives. It was alleged that an arrest warrant was issued in RoC for him, but was cancelled due to the fact it could not be served. Mr Mills was interviewed for the programme by Dominic and the answers to the very searching questions were not believed by Dominic and I have to say, not by me either.
It would seem that the basic protection of Government not overseeing what is happening on their watch happens as frequently in the south as the north. That the builder was unpoliced by the building industry regulatory body in general and local and national Government in particular is the key cause of most bad builds. This couple now live in a house they never had the deeds for because it was deemed unfinished (quite correctly) and now their home belongs to the liquidator.
It seems that Dominic has been approached by victims from the north but was unable to help. Whether this is because the builders in these cases were Turkish Cypriot and this programme only chases home grown cowboys, I do not know. However if this is the reason, there are some home grown cowboys in the north Cyprus property scams sagas, the most well known being Gary John Robb, but there are others. If however it is for political reasons, I would say to Dominic, do we become expendable just because we followed our dreams into a country the world does not recognise but does indeed exist. Are we to be punished further by being ignored, shouldn’t a good journalist follow a story wherever it takes him/her?
It seems there is no loyalty to victims and expecting British or other nationality cowboys to be selective about their victims is naïve.
Never give in never give up
Pauline Read
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