Companies House Register of Overseas Entities reveals Christodoulou as the owner of the 'BVI Companies'

As part of the UK Government’s effort to improve transparency when it comes to property ownership, ‘offshore’ companies that own UK property are now required to register details of the company’s beneficial owner with Companies House.

This Register has revealed that Yiannakis ‘John’ Christodoulou, the owner of Canary Riverside, is the beneficial owner of three BVI companies (Palm Trees Paradise Holdings, Everest Investments Trading Limited and Hermitage Lane Investments) that together own 25 flats in Canary Riverside.

The significance of this is two-fold:

• In 2018 Palm Trees Paradise (PTP) undertook a concerted effort to remove the then-S24 manager, Alan Coates and sought to solicit support from leaseholders. This included a solicitor’s letter, sent to every leaseholder, and a written denial that PTP had any connection to the landlord. Residents also reported a representative from Murray Hay knocking on apartment doors in July 2018. PTP subsequently applied to the FTT to remove Mr Coates and again denied any connection to the Landlord. At the FTT hearing in June 2019 PTP and CREM had separate legal representation and put forward separate nominations for a S24 manager. The FTT treated them as if they were separate entities - but determined that neither of their nominees were appointable. PTP did not participate in the subsequent hearing that led to the appointment of Mr Unsdorfer (albeit the Landlord put forward two nominee managers).

• The flats owned by the BVI companies appeared to have been assigned to them from the previous owner (Morgan Lodge) with service charge and utility debts still owed: this was highly irregular. In addition, the companies apparently continued to withhold payment of service and utility charges, requiring the S24 managers to engage in lengthy legal proceedings to recover the substantial debt. This was made more difficult because of the offshore ownership and further lease reassignments between the offshore companies (from Gold Capital to Hermitage Lane). Mr Coates highlighted this issue to the FTT in his report of June 2018 and Mr Unsdorfer referred to recovering the BVI companies’ debt in his November 2022 newsletter to leaseholders - which illustrates the time it has taken to recover the monies owed to the service charge, from companies we now know to be Landlord-owned.