Ian McGarry, the former head of City valuations at Dunlop Haywards, and property developer Saghir Afzal have pleaded guilty to taking part in a £50m commercial mortgage fraud at Southwark Crown Court.
The case against six remaining solicitor defendants will now proceed.
Collectively, the eight were charged with six offences of conspiracy to obtain a money transfer by deception and dishonestly obtain a money transfer.
The charges, relating to six commercial properties, were brought by the Serious Fraud Office, which began investigating the alleged fraud in March 2006 after a complaint from the Cheshire Building Society.
The barrister for the Serious Fraud Office today told the jury that Sagir Afzal had “recruited a dishonest valuer, Ian McGarry, to provide grossly inflated valuation reports” as part of the fraud.
He said that the fraud concerned six properties bought between November 2004 and Jan 2006 for a total of £5.688m and that between February 2005 and March 2006 these were used to persuade banks and building societies to loan a total of £49.2m.
The loans were equivalent to an 866% mortgage.
christian.metcalfe@estatesgazette.com
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