Somali refugee given £2.1million taxpayer-funded house owed £7,000 in rent on previous home



'Swift exit': Abdi Nur at the door of his new home in Kensington. He moved into the property last month - at the taxpayers' expense - because he didn't like the 'poor area' he previously lived in

After last week’s MoS revealed how a refugee moved from ‘too poor’ an area to Kensington, his former landlord says thousands in housing benefit has disappeared



A former asylum seeker from Somalia who was given a £2.1million luxury townhouse at the expense of the taxpayer has been accused of leaving rent arrears of £7,000 when he and his family moved out of their previous home.



Abdi Nur, along with his wife and their seven children, moved into the three-storey property in West London last month because he didn’t like the ‘poor’ area of the city they were living in.



His case was labelled ‘an outrage’ by the Prime Minister last week after The Mail on Sunday revealed the public was footing the townhouse’s £8,000 monthly rental bill.



Now, the owner of Mr Nur’s former home in North-West London has claimed the 42-year-old ex-bus conductor owes him £7,000 in rent arrears.



Under the Government’s scheme, housing benefit is funded by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). It sends the money to housing authorities, which then pass it on to the claimants, who use the money to pay rent.



Shashi Pindoria, a property tycoon in North London, said Mr Nur had secretly moved his family out of the house in the London borough of Brent shortly before June, after being chased for the outstanding debts.

‘He was supposed to pay me £790 a week but he left without paying around £7,000,’ said Mr Pindoria, 52.



‘He was receiving the money from the council but his payments had been falling short for quite some time. We asked him to catch up with the payments and then he suddenly left without ­telling us.’



Mr Pindoria also claimed he was forced to spend more than a £1,000 on repairs after Mr Nur and his family moved out.



‘There was damaged furniture, there was a missing bed and the worktops were badly damaged. I had to put in a whole new kitchen.



‘They never touched the garden, despite everything being provided for them to look after it. They never touched it – it was a right mess.’



Mr Pindoria said his letting agent was now intending to pursue Mr Nur through the courts for the money he allegedly owes.



The Nur family moved into the five-bedroom house in Kensal Rise in December 2008, but Mr Nur said they were unhappy because the area was ‘very poor’, there were no shops and the school was ‘four or five bus stops’ away.



Onwards and upwards: Nur's old house in Kensal Rise, north-west London (left) and his new £2.1m townhouse in Kensington



However, next-door neighbour Marek Olszta said the family were ‘spoilt’ and had always planned to move to a more lavish property.



‘I think they planned from the beginning that this house would just be an intermediate step,’ said the stained glass window designer, who is in his 40s.



‘When people live in council flats they have a hard time, but the house they had here should have been a dream come true.



‘We tried to introduce ourselves and my kids tried to make friends with their kids, but they were so withdrawn it was like they were from a different planet. They were so spoilt, the next thing they’d ask for is a limousine and a chauffeur. I thought they would be here for a long time but then they just disappeared.’



He added: ‘They never touched their garden until a few months before they left when they started trying to weed it with socks over their hands.’



A Brent Council spokesman said: ‘The DWP passes housing benefits to the local authority who administer its distribution, generally by passing it direct to the tenant. I am unable to confirm if in this case this was by cheque or a bank transfer. How the rent is then paid to the landlord is part of the letting contract between tenant and landlord.’



A DWP spokesman said: ‘We are urgently reforming housing benefit and it’s right that we return fairness to a system that is out of control. It’s not right that some families on benefits are able to live in homes that hard-working families cannot afford.’



Despite numerous attempts to contact him, Mr Nur was unavailable for comment.







Britain's broken benefit system

By CHRIS HASTINGS and ALLAN HALL





The owner of the £2.1 million house at the centre of Britain’s biggest housing benefit scandal is believed to be an Indian architect linked to the tax haven of Liechtenstein.



An investigation by this newspaper has established that the property is owned by the Brophy Group Business Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands and based in Liechtenstein.



Land Registry documents confirmed the ownership but did not give details of anyone connected with the company.

The revelation that a foreign national, with unspecified tax status, is benefiting from taxpayer-funded rent payments will heighten concern about Britain’s broken benefit system.



The Mail on Sunday tracked down Dr Roman Keckeis, a lawyer acting for Brophy.



Dr Keckeis, who lives in a £5million mansion over the border in Austria and who drives a £120,000 Maserati sports car, is known as Dr Fixit and regarded as one of the shrewdest lawyers in Liechtenstein.



He declined to talk in detail about the house or reveal the identities of anyone connected with the Brophy group.

He said: ‘We manage assets and our clients expect confidentiality. I can confirm the house was bought as an asset. More than that I cannot say.’



Liechtenstein, in an Alpine valley between Switzerland and Austria, prides itself on its secrecy. It is estimated to hold £150billion of the world’s assets in its banks and 5,000 Britons are thought to have deposited more than £3billion in the principality simply to avoid paying tax.

The Mail on Sunday also found Jeremy Havard, a management consultant whose wife Jane was the most recent owner of the Kensington house.



He said: ‘I recall that the person we sold it to was an Indian architect and academic who flew in to view the property. I seem to remember there was some mention of a tax haven.’



Previous owners of the Nur family’s new home include several aristocrats.



In the early Sixties it belonged to the Honourable Malcolm Napier, the son of the 13th Lord Napier of Merchistoun. He bought it for around £12,000 shortly after completing his National Service.



Napier, 77, who went on to establish businesses in South Africa and Zimbabwe, is now retired and lives in the restored 14th Century Bardmony manor house in Perthshire, Scotland.



He said: ‘It is outrageous and monstrous that someone should be getting so much taxpayers’ money to live in the house.



‘I enjoyed the house, which was a bit like two houses built into one. But I was hardly there because of my business dealings.’



In 1965, Napier sold the house to Captain Sir Robert Arthur Wilmot, the 8th Baronet of Chaddesden, for £15,000. Sir Robert and his wife moved in shortly after they were married, but he was tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident in 1974.



His son, Sir Henry Robert Wilmot, the current baronet, said: ‘It was my parents’ first marital home and I think they had a very happy time there.’



Another former owner, who asked not to be named, described the street where the house is as ‘friendly and sociable’.



‘I thought the neighbours there were terrific,’ he added.







Rachel Nott, pictured with her mother Bronwyn, is one of those denied a vital grant for the severely disabled after being promised money by the Independent Living Fund

But DWP has cut £350 for severely disabled



A Government body which provides grants for severely disabled adults has run out of money.



Funded by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – which provides the £8,000 a month rent for the Somali family to live in Kensington – the Independent Living Fund distributes grants of £350 a week to 21,000 of the country’s most severely disabled adults.



But it was forced to halt all new applications in June, after exhausting its annual budget of £350million three months into the financial year.



The move has left hundreds of disabled adults and carers who had been promised money appealing to local social services to make up the shortfall.



Rachel Nott, 19, is one of those denied the vital grant after being promised money by the ILF needed to pay for her to visit a specialist day care centre for 31 hours a week.



Her mother Bronwyn, 62, from Devon, struggles to look after Rachel, who has the mental age of an

18-month-old baby and requires 24-hour care.



‘We have worked and paid taxes all our lives but were refused help for our daughter,’ says Mrs Nott. ‘Yet the DWP is providing a family in Kensington with their luxury lifestyle.’







The price tag for this system is staggering - we have to make it fairer to taxpayers



COMMENT By IAIN DUNCAN SMITH

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions



Last Sunday, this newspaper reported the worrying case of a family living in a £2million Kensington townhouse, the £8,000-a-month rent being paid directly through housing benefit.



This story encapsulated so much of what is wrong with our housing benefit system and the way it has distorted so many lives.



It is clearly unfair that many families on benefits are living in accommodation that working families on low incomes cannot afford.



Furthermore, many families dependent on benefits know they would not be able to meet the high rents on such properties if they managed to get into work themselves.



Under the current system, as last week’s front page starkly demonstrated, housing benefit rewards unemployment. If you do not work and claim benefits, you can get the taxpayer to subsidise a home you could never possibly afford to live in if you moved into work.



The price tag for this system is staggering. Costs have ballooned from £10.7billion in 2005-06 to £15.7billion in 2010-11.



'From April, we’ll expect anyone of working age who lives in a property covered by housing benefit to make a contribution'



If left unreformed, the budget is projected to hit £20billion in 2014-15. Even in a benign economic climate, this would be unacceptable, but in light of the catastrophic mess we inherited from Labour, the cost is simply unsustainable.



That’s why, within two months of coming to power, the Coalition

Government has taken action that Labour failed to take for 13 years.



In the Emergency Budget, we set out a series of reforms to housing benefit, starting with a cap on rents. From next April, we will cap the benefit, so the maximum possible claim will be £400 per week for a four-bedroom property. If someone wants a bigger property or to pay a higher rent, that’s fine – but it will be coming out of their own pocket.



All sizes of properties will have similar caps, so that we know we are providing adequate housing for all those that need it. And we will no longer see taxpayers footing the bill for inflated rents.



At the same time, our reforms will exert downward pressure on the rentals market, as the current system has encouraged landlords to hike rents to housing benefit customers, secure in the knowledge that the State would pick up the bill.



From April, we’ll expect anyone of working age who lives in a property covered by housing benefit to make a contribution. It seems fair to me to expect any adult living in a property funded by taxpayers to share some element of financial responsibility.



We will also restrict the benefit to the cheapest third of properties (rather than the cheapest half as it stands now). This will give people a choice of where to live but it will also end the unfairness in the current system which allows people on benefits to live in homes well beyond the means of many working families.



We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the Welfare System into something we can once again be proud of – a safety net which is there for us in our time of need, rather than a way of life.



Or, as Tony Blair said before Labour gave up trying to reform the benefit system, ‘… a hand up, not a hand out’.

Instead, Labour left us with 5.5million people of working age trapped on benefits. Reforming housing benefit is just the first step. Ultimately, I want it to lead us to a Welfare State that is fit for purpose once more.

