Property mogul Andy Ruhan fraudulently breached his duties in a £100m deal for a luxury London hotel, a senior judge has ruled.
Ruhan – who has driven on the British GT circuit and was on the board of the Lotus Formula One team – was found by a High Court judge to have deceived the board of a now-defunct hotel developer.
In the High Court last week, Mr Justice Foxton ruled that Ruhan had breached his fiduciary duties as a company director of Hotel Portfolio II by deceiving its board and shareholders. The court found that Ruhan had declared he had no interest in a deal to sell several properties in Mayfair known collectively as “the Hyde Park Hotels”.
Liquidators for Hotel Portfolio II, which has gone bust, told the court that Ruhan had committed civil fraud by using Anthony Stevens, a British businessman who lives in Europe, to pose as a proposed independent purchaser of the properties. Ruhan had become the ultimate beneficial owner of the Hyde Park Hotels in 2005 and then tried to redevelop two of the properties as luxury residential flats.
The court heard that he had entered into an equal-share joint venture agreement with Christian and Nick Candy, the property developers.
Ruhan and the Candy brothers then obtained planning permission to redevelop the hotels. Between 2006 and 2008, Ruhan sold the hotels to independent third parties. The court was told that deals had generated a secret profit of more than £100m.
The allegation of a secret nominee has been vigorously denied by both Ruhan and Stevens since the litigation was launched in 2018. Representatives of the claimants said they were able to prove the allegations by obtaining banking documents after invoking liquidator investigatory powers under the Insolvency Act 1986.
It was not alleged that the Candy brothers had assisted Ruhan in defrauding Hotel Portfolio II. The judge said Ruhan was “the principal mover in a major fraud from which he made very substantial profits”. Ruhan’s lawyer said he was considering an appeal.
Ruhan was described 10 years ago in The Sunday Times as “the most successful property tycoon” most people had never heard of. His estranged wife, Tania Richardson-Ruhan, told a judge in 2017 that she had been questioned by police over claims she had paid a hitman with a “view to getting rid of” her husband. She denied the allegations.
