Property owner, with a multimillion pound portfolio, has at least 60 convictions for housing offences

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The fines cases heard at Highbury Corner magistrates court differ markedly.

It may host hearings for north London residents being chased for non-payment of their TV licence fee – where penalties as low as £55 prompt defendants to plead with magistrates to allow them to pay £2.50 a week.

Then there are more valuable outstanding fines claims, such as the case of Katia Goremsandu, a property owner once dubbed the “country’s worst landlord” as a result of her multiple convictions for housing offences.

In 2016 Goremsandu was found to be “wilfully refusing” to pay tens of thousands of pounds in fines, which had been levied for some of those housing offences, including leaving her tenants without heating or functioning fire alarms.

The 68-year-old landlord has a multimillion-pound portfolio of at least 17 properties in London – including flats in luxury blocks in Westminster and Kensington that are valued at upwards of £500,000 each.

But Goremsandu has been allowed a repayment deal that has almost nine years to run.

According to the court she is paying off £100,000 of outstanding penalties at the rate of £1,000 a month. Meanwhile, she has retained ownership of her entire property portfolio, according to documents filed with the Land Registry.

Haringey council estimated in 2014 that Goremsandu’s rental income was around £188,000 a year, including housing benefit payments. The landlord claimed in court papers last year that her annual rental income was £109,200.

The landlord’s repayment scheme has been agreed by the courts, despite earlier plans to compel her to sell her property to pay her fines.

The forced sale proposal is contained within court filings made by Westminster and Haringey councils, as part of the London boroughs’ successful joint application for a criminal behaviour order against the landlord last year, which prevents the landlord from managing property for 10 years. Goremsandu can, however, continue to rent out her properties through an agent.

The repayment deal has only just come to light, as Westminster council spent months refusing to release its documents, only for the Guardian to win a court ruling in early November forcing the local authority’s papers to be disclosed.

The court papers also state that Goremsandu has “at least 60 convictions” for housing offences – far more than previously thought and dwarfing the seven convictions that led to her topping a list of landlords convicted for housing offences in 2014, a year in which she was convicted of 25 offences in Haringey alone.

Joe Beswick, head of housing at the New Economics Foundation thinktank, said: “Until we introduce real protections for tenants, and proper means of enforcement, landlords like Goremsandu will continue to operate like this.

“The fact that Goremsandu is able to continue earning huge sums annually despite gross malpractice is a clear example of the imbalance of power in our housing system. Landlords are reaping enormous financial rewards, benefiting from limited regulation and toothless enforcement, while tenants can be evicted without fault with just two months’ notice.”

The papers also said that in 2016, when the balance of Goremsandu’s fines stood at £71,000, she was found to have “wilfully refused to pay after she refused to voluntarily sell her properties to make payment”, with the case adjourned to “allow time for the court collection agency to apply for and obtain an order for sale of [Goremsandu’s] properties”.

A clerk at HM Courts & Tribunal Service told the Guardian this week that Goremsandu is now making payments of £1,000 a month, and has paid off £40,345.50 of fines totalling £143,709.12.

When contacted by the Guardian for comment, Goremsandu said: “Oh, go away please. Get lost.”

She claimed to the court that her properties had been damaged by her tenants and that she was a victim.

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A Westminster council spokesman said: “The case [against Goremsandu] was a result of a partnership with Haringey council to combat some of the worst abuses in the private rented sector. The resulting criminal behaviour order prohibited Katia Goremsandu from managing any property in either borough for a decade, which was a landmark result.”

He said the council had “initially checked” Goremsandu properties the local authority had used to house homeless families and that the council had spent months fighting the release of its court files to protect the anonymity of witnesses. Most of the witnesses had been identified in open court.

Haringey council and the London Collection and Compliance Centre, a division of HM Courts and Tribunals Service, did not comment.