Issa claimed Abu Dhabi steel wealth
BASHAR Issa made his mark in Manchester as a developer and went on to pose as a film producer, but court papers show he had another guise.
TheBusinessDesk.com always understood he was born in Kuwait to Iraqi parents and later moved to London, but when he was seeking finance for the 130-apartment Sarah Tower in Dale Street – which is now a Premier Inn – he apparently told the Bank of Ireland he was from a wealthy family with steel interests in Abu Dhabi.
This was in 2005, long before the city’s association with Abu Dhabi through the ownership of Manchester City FC by a member of the oil state’s royal family.
The detail is revealed in a court judgement of a claim by the quantity surveyor F+G against commercial agent CBRE after it was sued by the Bank of Ireland for nearly £10m for alleged flaws in its advice on the Sarah Tower scheme.
F+G settled in January by paying £3.35m, plus costs, and went on to pursue CBRE claiming it was also liable for its valuation work.
F+G’s claim against CBRE was ultimately unsuccessful because it was unable to prove that the valuation had caused the bank’s loss. Mr Justice Edwards-Stuart said the development had been over-valued by 20% and the site by 39% at £34m and £8.9m respectively.
The July judgement shows that the Bank of Ireland lent Issa £4.4m in June 2005 to buy the site and work started before a further loan of £8.7m was confirmed to fund the development.
The judge said: “His [Issa’s] ability to start and carry out a substantial amount of the work without a loan must have reinforced this impression [that he was from a wealthy family].”
He added: “Unfortunately, it all went wrong. Mr Issa turned out to be a rogue, and Issa Ltd’s contractor, BS Construction Ltd went into administration in May 2008. Following a demand for about £14.25m by the bank, Issa Ltd went into administration in July 2008. The bank failed to recover over £8m of the money that it had advanced to Issa Ltd towards the costs of the development.”
Elsewhere in Manchester, Issa was responsible for the partially built Issa Quay which is now a 12-storey serviced apartment block in Ducie Street and the steel frame for the mixed-use Sarah Point on Great Ancoats Street which is now being finished by UK Land & Property as Nuovo. Mr Issa also bought the Statler Towers in Buffalo, New York and pledged to build the city’s tallest skyscraper.
He was declared bankrupt in 2009 and re-emerged in March last year as a defendant in a tax fraud case based around claims for film tax credits of £2.7m for a film that had not been made. In an attempted cover-up a film called A Landscape of Lies, starring Loose Women presenter Andrea McLean, was made on a fraction of the budget originally proposed. Issa was jailed along with four co-defendants, receiving six years.
