By David Young-
A businessman cheated Thurrock Council out of hundreds of millions of pounds, according to a report.
Leaked documents revealed that Liam Kavanagh(pictured) went on a spending spree with the borrowed cash from Thurrock Council to buy luxury goods, including a yacht, costing £16 million, and a £12 million private jet.
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South Essex council borrowed a staggering £655 million to invest in Kavanagh’s solar farm company, Rockfire Farm, only to see their funds misused for extravagant purchases, including a £2.3m Bugatti supercar and a £1m diamond-encrusted watch. The investments were made through complex bonds, and the council’s hope for substantial interest payments disappeared after Kavanagh shut down his companies and left the council with a £200 million shortfall.
The revelations were first made by the BBC’s Panorama and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which uncovered a potential fraud in the valuation of Rockfire’s solar farms. He trierd to obtain a further £40m by asking one of his directors to exaggerate more information. Gavin Cunningham, a former investigator with the Serious Fraud Office, pointed out that inaccurate energy prices were used to inflate the farms’ value, misleading investors like Thurrock Council.
He said: “The effect of that will be that you end up with a far greater valuation of the overall portfolio of solar farms than is actually the case. And anyone relying on that information is going to be misled by it.” It was discovered that when one of Rockfire’s solar farm portfolios was revalued in 2018, the declared power price was significantly higher than the average market rate.
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This prompted the council to invest an additional £130 million that never reached the solar farm, suggesting that Kavanagh had always intended to use the money for personal gain. In a leaked email from 2020, Kavanagh revealed his plan to create a new family investment office, raising serious questions about his intentions.
It read: “These funds… will be used to create a new family investment office and to create wealth for years to come. This has always been my plan.” He has since left the UK, but defends his company’s contributions to the council over the years, denying any wrongdoing.
He said: “I have never misled Thurrock Council during the course of those investments. It was always my understanding that Thurrock Council conducted its own independent due diligence into investments.”
The fallout from this financial disaster has hit Thurrock hard, with the council now forced to make severe cu
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