Caravan park owner who built up £1.2m fortune could be left with nothing after bank collapse



A couple who ran a caravan park may have lost their £1.2million life savings after they sold the business and deposited the profits in a failed Icelandic bank.

Darren and Ruth Johnston cashed in the 17-acre site, a family business for three generations, after a drop in takings last winter made them fear a recession.

They hoped to ride out the storm with their money in a high-interest account and buy a smaller caravan business during brighter economic times. But just six months after selling Winkups Caravan Park in Abergele, North Wales – and celebrating by buying his wife a Porsche Boxster – Mr Johnston was yesterday formally told he can no longer access his savings.



Boom to bust: Darren Johnson and his wife Ruth Johnson have lost their caravan park empire

He and Mrs Johnston, a former hairdresser, also face a £120,000 capital gains tax bill on their vanished profits. It will be a familiar story to thousands who have lost savings deposited in Icelandic banks through offshore subsidiaries.

The Johnstons chose an offshore bond offered by Royal Skandia after a financial adviser recommended the six per cent interest rate.

But the bond was deposited with an Isle of Man subsidiary of Icelandic bank Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander (KSF), which went bust this month.

While UK depositors have had their money guaranteed by the Government, offshore KSF accounts are not covered.

Nor is the money protected by an Isle of Man guarantee for personal depositors, as the Royal Skandia bond is regarded as a corporate one.

In letters sent to the couple and hundreds of other savers yesterday, Royal Skandia said: ‘At this time you are not able to switch money from these deposits to other assets. We recognise that these developments will cause you considerable distress.’

The couple now face losing their four-bedroom £500,000 home in Denbigh, North Wales. They fear they will have to pull sons Harry, 13, and George, ten, out of private schools.

So far the couple, who have been married for 15 years, have hidden the full scale of the ‘nightmare’ from the boys.

Mrs Johnston, 47, said: ‘I just want to protect them as long as I can. But I don’t think we will be able to hang on to my car for much longer.

‘Every morning I wake up feeling sick, just gut-wrenching. Neither of us can sleep, it is just too horrendous to contemplate. We are going to have to start all over again despite everything we have worked for.’

Mr Johnston, 44, said: ‘I have never had any savings in my life, just a Nationwide account which I opened a week into my first job at the age of 22.

‘This was the first time I had money to save and I trusted what I was told.

‘I feel like a fool now but that does not mean that those like me deserve this. I am being treated like a fat cat who can afford to lose a million here and there.

‘Gordon Brown seems to not care about us, to have just decided that the Isle of Man is a leper and that it should go down along with all who have put money there.

‘Our family’s caravan park was good and simple, bingo and beer. Good people went there, not wealthy people, but it was an honest business in which we worked hard.

‘Gordon Brown is doing nothing. There are hundreds if not thousands like us who put savings away. We weren’t even playing the stock markets.’

Royal Skandia said it was in talks with the local authorities and the British Government about compensation schemes.

A spokesman said: ‘We are doing everything we can for our clients. We do not provide financial advice, merely offer products. Mr and Mrs Johnston will have received advice from an independent financial adviser.’