A perfect storm

Thanet's beleaguered UKIP council are currently finding life tough at the top. Firstly they are in danger of losing Dreamland (where they own the freehold) to receivership.
Secondly the saga of Manston airport rumbles on and yesterday they announced spending another £50K of ratepayer's money on another viability study which they say will feed into the proposed Local Plan. This despite spending £100K already.

Thirdly the latest news coming out is that Cardy will be appointing an administrator as they are likely to be looking for a buyer "Workers for Cardy Construction Ltd, based in Canterbury, report they were told to collect their tools due to a stop on works this morning." Full story here

For regular readers of this blog will know that after the 2009 Development Agreement ran out in February 2014 TDC have put their faith in Cardy buying out Shaun Keegan's ltd company SFP Ventures (UK) Ltd and this has recently occurred See here 

It seems now the carefully constructed change over has started to unwind. So where does that leave Ramsgate? And TDC?

The current situation is Cardy Ramsgate Ltd (Mike Stannard) owns SFP Ventures (UK) Ltd which in turn owns 3 leases sold for £550K by Sandy Ezekiel's Tory administration in 2009 and further to that £1M was paid to TDC as a surety. 

SFP's accounts show that just over £5M has been deposited into the company by means of director loans, so it seems likely Cardy have input some of that money (into the tombstones) and the rest by Shaun Keegan.

Has this been paid back to Keegan when Cardy Ramsgate bought out SFP?

Has the surety money (£1M) been used for the deposit to TDC?

The state of play with TDC and Cardy is explained here

So contracts may have been exchanged but the purchase of the freehold has yet to be completed so it seems Pleasurama is in the same position as Dreamland that is TDC still hold the Freehold but the leases are held by a company in financial difficulties.

What hasn't changed is there is extant planning for 107 apartments which remains on the site in perpetuity.
It is possible that a new buyer comes forward and takes over the development however if any new buyer takes over Cardy Ramsgate Ltd and decides to 1. continue the current incomplete deal with TDC 2. Decides to put in New Planning (which would trigger an expensive Flood Risk Assessment) Either way the losers are the tourist industry and by extension the people living in the area.
It was May 1998 when the Pleasurama site caught fire and in looks like the people of Ramsgate have a 20 year anniversary fast approaching without resolution of the site.

What next aliens taking over?

UPDATE:
On the 20th July 2016 Mike Stannard, owner of SFP Ventures (UK) Ltd via Cardy Ramsgate Ltd completed on the deal with TDC by payment of approximately £3M. TDC then would have handed over the freehold and taken back the 3x199 year leases issued to Shaun Keegan in 2009.

We await a statement from TDC as to the development agreement and its long stop date. When TDC issue a statement I will update.

What's a million between friends

For those who have not followed the twists and turns of this saga a brief resume of the shenanigans in 2009 under leader Ezekiel.

The former legal eagle at TDC concluded in 2014 that TDC did little "due diligence" on SFP Ventures (UK) Ltd and even though they paid TDC £1M surety in September 2009 the risk to TDC was too great and the Chief Finance officer was right to recommend not to agree the 2009 amendments.

So where did this £1Million come from. According to the Finance Officer it was via the UK clearing banking system however when pressed she said they had NEVER identified the source of the funds. However it is clear from the letters in TDC's possession this money had arrived via Tortola, one of the British Virgin Islands. A tax haven in anyone else's eyes, however sadly not in TDCs.

SFP Services Ltd is really SFP Services Inc based in Tortola and run by Colin Hill the money man behind Shaun Keegan.
Now where is this money now?
It seems TDC doesn't want to answer this question although it seems likely this is the same £1M referred to by Lin Fairbrass in her answer to "What's happening with the Cardy build"

It seems the money has already been partially spent however the money seems to have passed through many hands so identifying the true source seems to be a moot point as it has effectively been well washed.

Sean Keegan- an obituary

When SFP Venture Partners based in Tortola (In the British Virgin Islands) created a UK Ltd Company in 2006 it was done to satisfy the need for a UK entity in negotiations with Thanet District Council. Its ownership (1 share) has always been in the hand of Shaun Patrick Keegan, the father in Law of Colin Hill the money man controlling this land banking scheme.
This company was called SFP Ventures (UK) Ltd (registration number 05666803) and until recently has been the owner of 3 leases but not the Freehold.

On the annual return in 2015 Shaun Keegan was still the owner of the one share however when the return was sent to Companies House on the 7th January 2016 this had changed.

Which means on the 31st December 2015 Shaun Keegan relinquished control of SFP to an entity called Cardy Ramsgate Limited. So who controls Cardy Ramsgate Limited?

So the takeover of SFP was in the favour of Michael Stannard a director of Cardy based in Wincheap, Canterbury and the builders taken on in 2009 by Shaun Keegan. Now according to the TDC Portfolio Holder completion on the new development agreement brokered by the previous administration is imminent and building can commence

So some good news for the eyesore that is Pleasurama, however Thanet's finest (sic) detectives are again alleging that there is a restrictive covenant on the site despite all of their investigating and conspiracy theories no one outside their very small circle can come up with any shred of evidence and even an FOI has produced a zero response

My last blog on this was last July ( link here) so they have failed to find any trace of this phantom piece of paper and so the conspiracy goes on unabated

I won't go into why there is no covenant as it was all detailed in the July 2015 blog however after having a chat with a Councillor who was in the original Cabinet who made the decision to award the build to SFP he did point out the following facts.
1. There is no knowledge of a restrictive Covenant stating the land had to be for leisure*1
2. No Local authority would fetter their actions by creating a restrictive Covenant on land they might sell*2
It seems that the conspiracy theorists are having a field day because something that doesn't exist is subject of various theories of how it has vanished.

Kandy knows full well that Janet Woods had lent me her folder and it was copied and returned. If Janet moved and thrown her papers away so be it, What I had was before FORS even existed as it wasn't a constituted group until November 2013. The paperwork to which she refers is the treasurers stuff (cheque book, final accounts, and a cash box) and nothing to do with any files which have been collected over many months and clearly scanned and posted into the files section of the FB page for anyone to download.
The paperwork given to me with a promise not to pass them to Kandy and her co-cconspirators were returned to David Green before I left Ramsgate. I presume he has shredded them after he lost his seat in the 2015 election.


*1 There is a RC covering the view from Wellington Crescent which any developer's solicitor would discover in a local search
*2 This would preclude Ramsgate Corporation and TDC from creating one.

I will point out one thing for the latecomers into this conspiracy John Davis will have NO personal knowledge of FORS prior to March 2015. He wasn't part of the original steering group created at the beginning of 2013, neither was he at any time part of the constituted group. Original group members were Bayo, Duncan Smithson and myself. Even Kandy didn't put herself down for any of the main jobs for reasons only known to herself. Duncan came off as secretary because he couldn't pass Money Laundering for the bank account. John Davis only wheedled his way in after March 2015. To date no accounts have ever been published not even the interim ones I left with the treasurer's stuff.