Staff quarters, a leisure complex, tennis court and cinema feature in the redevelopment plans for Belgravia House, an English mansion that is home to Gayle Dunne, who is fighting her developer husband’s bankruptcy officials in three jurisdictions.
The property on 3.2 acres in Surrey was bought for £3.925m (€4.5m) in 2014, with planning permission in place to demolish the existing red-brick residence, coach house and stables.
Computer-generated images of the proposed new dwelling, submitted with the planning application, show an expansive, modern house with a balconied master bedroom set in wood-fringed parkland.
The grant of approval provides for a 15,712 sq ft, three-storey, seven-bedroom home plus a two-storey gate lodge, triple garage, swimming pool, spa, gym, sauna, steam room and games room.
Neighbours on Bishopsgate Road in Englefield Green, Egham, say Gayle Dunne is residing in Belgravia House. Her husband, who has been declared bankrupt in Ireland and Connecticut, has been seen at the property.
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In High Court proceedings against Chris Lehane, Seán Dunne’s official assignee in Irish bankruptcy, Gayle Dunne testified last month that she is legally separated from her husband.
Belgravia House lies in England’s stockbroker belt, close to Royal Berkshire Polo Club, Eton College, Ascot, and Wentworth and Sunningdale golf clubs.
A £1m deposit was paid on the property in March 2014 and its acquisition from the vendor, an Isle of Man company, was completed that October. The purchaser was registered as Lonsyd Limited, a real estate company incorporated in England in October 2014. The company’s sole director was registered as John Weatherall, an English auctioneer.
He did not respond to attempts to contact him in September 2015.
The name was removed from the gates of Belgravia House three days after a photographer from this newspaper took pictures of the property on September 12, 2015. In the same period, a solicitor with the firm Solomon Taylor & Shaw in London’s Hampstead High Street — Lonsyd’s registered address — refused to discuss the property when phoned, and hung up.
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When judge Caroline Costello asked why a home address was not included on documents submitted to the High Court in Dublin last month, Gayle Dunne’s legal team passed the address up to the bench in a sealed envelope.
They claimed this was necessary because there had been intrusions on their client’s privacy.
Lonsyd has two outstanding mortgages with Lancashire Mortgage Corporation, created in February 2015.
Lehane applied to the South African High Court in September 2014 for an order to seize the proceeds from a planned €19m sale of the Lagoon Beach Hotel in Cape Town, which Seán Dunne’s company, Mountbrook — later renamed Mavior — had developed. The hotel was part of €100m in assets he transferred to Gayle Dunne, which are the subject of court actions in Ireland and America.
In the Cape Town proceedings, Gayle Dunne argued that, if she did not get the hotel’s sale proceeds, she would breach an agreement to buy a property in the UK for £5m and she stood to forfeit a £1m deposit on it.
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Ruling against her, the judge noted she had concluded the UK purchase in March 2014, four months before agreement was reached to sell the Lagoon Beach Hotel.
The judge said it would be “nigh impossible” to trace the flow of proceeds from the hotel sale “given the ease with which funds can be transferred internationally, privacy of banking transactions, and the fact that Mrs Dunne controls a network of companies registered in multiple jurisdictions around the world.”
Gayle Dunne incorporated a new company in England last March for the purpose of “buying and selling of own real estate”. She is registered in her married name as the owner of the new company, Cliffe Dekker Homes Ltd, with a registered address at Solomon Taylor & Shaw’s offices.
A similarly named South African law firm, Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, was a respondent in Lehane’s application to the Cape Town court on the grounds that “ it might be holding the proceeds from any sale” of the Lagoon Beach Hotel.
Nama obtained a High Court judgment against Seán Dunne in March 2012 for €185.3m. In May the same year, Ulster Bank got judgment against him for more than €163m.