Complex Network Linking Liverpool Firm To Nairobi

International Press

15 June 2004 Page: w

Liverpool Daily Post, UK The Daily Post today reveals the complex international financial web which links a Liverpool-based company with an investigation into a £21m passport deal in Kenya. Lawyers representing the company at the centre of the inquiry, Anglo-Leasing Finance, have said it is a Swiss company which conducts its English-speaking work in Liverpool. Its office is a three-storey block on Upper Parliament Street, opposite the Georgian splendour of Falkner Square. When a reporter called at the office the only company working there was Saagar Associates, a management company which looks after property across the city. And a spokeswoman for the Swiss Embassy last night said no company is registered in Switzerland under the name Anglo-Leasing. She said: "We have checked the central register. There is no such company registered under this name. There is no such company registered as Anglo-Leasing and Finance." However, the Daily Post has uncovered a number of links between Saagar Associates and a previous financial investigation in Kenya. The only shareholder of Saagar Associates is a 46-year-old Kenyan woman currently living in Bangalore, India. Sudha Ruparell, 46, daughter of wealthy Nairobi businessman Chamanlal Kamani, married Liverpool property entrepreneur Ashwin Ruparell in 1990. The Kamanis made their fortune in the Kenyan cotton industry and have previously been linked to a probe involving government contracts. In 1993 a company called Kamsons Ltd negotiated a deal to supply Kenya with a fleet of police jeeps. But within months the jeeps were grounded because of malfunctions. Company records show that the directors of Kamsons were Chamanlal Kamani and his two sons Rashmi and Deepak. Sudha Kamani was listed as a non-shareholder director. Kamsons bought the defective jeeps from a UK firm called Hallmark International. Documents signed on August 6 1993 show that Ashwin Ruparell was a director of Hallmark. Mr Ruparell was a Liverpool property entrepreneur who built up a £50m property portfolio in the city during the 1980s. Ashwin Ruparell established as many as 42 separate companies - many of which owned and managed a single property. The Ruparells lived in an luxury five-bedroom detached house in Aigburth, south Liverpool and became well known among the property and development entrepreneurs of the city. But in the early 1990s the property market crashed and the Ruparell properties were plunged into negative equity. In 1993 Ashwin Ruparell was disqualified from being a company director after a maintenance and construction company he owned called Citadel Construction went insolvent and it was discovered he had not kept full financial records. Well-placed sources have told the Daily Post the Kamani family helped form a company called North West Property Holdings to buy a £1m part of the Ruparell portfolio. Mr Ruparell needed to clinch the deal to reduce his debt and prevent bankruptcy. It is understood the company was established in the British Virgin Islands and its directors are based in Jersey. The paper trail of the company is believed to extend as far as Panama. In 1995 North West Property Holdings went into an agreement with Salix Associates to manage the property. A secret 1997 Dutch police report seen by the Daily Post has revealed that North West Property Holdings was investigated by detectives attempting to trace the assets of convicted Liverpool drugs baron Curtis Warren. The investigation centred on a note found on October 24 1996 in the Wapping Dock apartment of Stephanie Glennon, the girlfriend of Curtis Warren. The note listed 39 flats across the city and included a set of financial calculations. A Land Registry search by police revealed the property was owned by North West Property Holdings. The Daily Post understands the note, which was not signed, was written by Ashwin Ruparell. Our sources say the note was passed to Curtis Warren while Ashwin Ruparell, who died in 1997 of heart failure, was desperately trying to sell off his property portfolio. However, the sources also tell us he sold the property between 1993 and 1995 to North West Property Holdings and not to Warren.