This article is the subject of a legal complaint from John Christodoulou.
For a billionaire property tycoon who entertains Premier League footballers on his £40 million yacht and mixes with the stars, image can be important. So in June John Christodoulou, one of Britain’s richest men, criticised businesses that took pandemic loans because it would give the “wrong image”.
He told an audience in London that he and his group “borrowed no money from the government” but The Times can reveal that he received millions in furlough support.
The money, which could amount to £6 million, was claimed through the coronavirus job retention scheme using shell companies of which Christodoulou is not a director nor listed as an immediate owner. The four companies are all ultimately controlled by him, however.
The companies, Blue Manchester, Blue Liverpool, YFSCR and Octagon Pier, claimed between £1.3 million and £2.9 million from last December to June this year. However, the same ones could have claimed up to £6.5 million since April last year. HM Revenue & Customs has declined to release furlough figures for before December.
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Christodoulou, who is worth an estimated £2 billion according to The Sunday Times Rich List, fled his native Cyprus to come to Britain as a child after Turkey’s invasion in 1974. He made his fortune buying and selling flats in London and has amassed a property empire that includes hotels, offices and high-rise residential towers in the UK and mainland Europe. His privately owned company, the Yianis Group, is thought to be one of the largest freeholders in the country.
Christodoulou is based in Monaco and owns a yacht named Zeus, after the Greek god. Cypriot media reported this week that he was buying the football club Omonia Nicosia for about €30 million.
In October residents of a block in Hackney, east London, that is majority owned by Yianis wrote Christodoulou a letter asking for rent reductions. They camped outside one of the two five-star hotels he owns in Canary Wharf with signs reading: “Make the rich pay for Covid”.
“The last year and a half has been very, very tough,” Christodoulou told an audience at the National Federation of Cypriots in the UK in June. “Thirty per cent of my business is hotels and that’s suffered incredibly. We borrowed no money from the government . . . I didn’t, not just because I didn’t feel it’s the right thing to do [but] because it shows the wrong sign.” The billionaire added that he thought people who borrowed money “from the government didn’t have enough cash”.
He said: “The biggest thing for me is to stay faithful to the people who are faithful to me. We haven’t had to sack or get rid of anybody that works for me.”
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The furlough scheme ended in September. Last month the government announced that British businesses had returned £1.3 billion in furlough cash. Those that had overclaimed or decided they no longer needed payments received through the scheme handed back £300 million in the past three months. The government said the scheme had supported 11.6 million jobs.
Christodoulou did not respond when asked if he had returned any of the money or intended to do so. He and Yianis Group did not respond when approached for comment.