A chartered surveyor at Ashdown Lyons has been found guilty of taking more than £1m in bribes for inflating the values of exclusive London homes.
Mary-Jane Rathie was told by Judge Timothy Pontius that she can expect a jail sentence after she was found guilty of five counts of fraud by a jury at the Old Bailey, EC4. She will be sentenced next month.
The court heard that Rathie, who has worked at Ashdown Lyons since 2003, accepted bribes including £900,000 in cash, a Bentley Continental and a Range Rover Sport for inflating the values of five properties in Belgrave Court, Westferry Circus, Canary Wharf; Chester Mews, Belgravia; Grosvenor Road, Pimlico; Cheyne Walk and Cadogan Square.
The scam led to Bank of Scotland paying out £10m in mortgage offers to a fraudster calling herself Joanne Pier, who has now disappeared.
Prosecutor David Durose told the jury that, in March 2007, Joanne Pier approached Ashdown Lyons seeking valuations on numerous residential properties claiming she was in dispute with her father, a wealthy diamond trader, and was trying to obtain the properties from the family trust.
The next month Rathie reported to her bosses in the Finchley office that Pier had offered her a £100,000 “wedding gift”, which she refused as she was acting in the role of independent surveyor for a bank.
However, Durose said that in the following months, Rathie accepted other bribes for providing dozens of valuations to Pier, including for the five properties at the centre of the case.
Rathie valued the Cheyne Walk, after refurbishment, at £6m with a rental value of £270,000 a year, but an independent surveyor assessed the true value at £3.5m with a rental value of £180,000 pa. The property at Cadogan Square was valued at £3.2m, whereas the independent survey valued it at £1.5m.
Rathie’s husband, an officer with the Metropolitan Police, was cleared of concealing his wife’s crimes.
