Property entrepreneur guilty of £1.3m fraud

A PROPERTY developer has been convicted at Preston Crown Court for defrauding seven investors in deals worth £1.3m.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said Shaun Kiely’s Sky Properties (Northern) auctioned a string of freeholds between June and October 2005 claiming they were occupied by a profitable retail chain on a 20-year lease.

But the shops, also owned by Kiely and trading under the S-Mart name, were loss-making and defaulted on their leases as soon as the freehold was sold, said the SFO.

Kiely, of Rossendale, was found guilty on Tuesday of eight charges of obtaining money transfers by deception and three of false accounting. A former manager at the companies, Christopher Page, was acquitted of an obtaining money transfers by deception charge. Kiely will be sentenced on July 4.

The SFO said Kiely had provided misleasing information to auctioneers and created false invoices to help present S-Mart as a profitable business. The firm’s 2004 accounts were prepared by a certified accountancy firm which has been reported to the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants by the SFO for investigation into potential professional misconduct.

Some eleven S-Mart shops were identified in court, including those in Frizington, Cumbria; Hyde, Cheshire; and Morecambe, Lancashire.