Taking action: Churchill's victims collaborate

  • 2008-09-24
  • By Matt Withers
TALLINN - Action Against Churchill is an initiative started by a collective of Churchill's ex-clients; the group is active on the Eye on Worldwide.com property forum and seeks to gather facts from other victims and sources to facilitate legal proceedings against the company. The group is currently spearheading efforts to retrieve clients' lost deposits.

Action Against Churchill claims:
"Churchill originally had four separate development sites in the Parnu area. None has actually been completed, and most have not yet started 's at least one never even got planning permission."
"Churchill has changed its company identity twice, but the same individuals have been involved throughout. The latest Churchill vehicle recently went into liquidation. There is therefore now no prospect of any further development in Parnu."

"Churchill has taken deposits from at least 150 parties and probably many more. This amounts to over 1.5 million pounds (1.9 million euros or 29.8 million kroons). Other people have made deposits to Churchill on property in Goa, India, only to find that it had also disappeared."
The group also told The Baltic Times the following:
"There have been a number of people involved in this very large fraud at different times. From our investigations we believe none of them to be innocent 's just varying levels of guilt."
"What is consistent is that they are all now protesting their innocence and don't know where the millions of pounds have gone. Meanwhile, hundreds of investors have to face the fact that large portions of their savings have simply been stolen."

"Lee Williams was in legal dispute through the Estonian courts with [contractor] Gellerts for over two years to try and retrieve the portion of deposits from investors paid to Gellerts."
"Last October or November the court ruled that Lee Williams was just the broker and therefore Gellerts should repay the investors the money direct."
"We were informed by Churchill U.K. that they had broken off contact with Lee Williams (Karl Goldthorpe and Lee had fallen out) and therefore we investors had to contact Andres of Munga Lawyers in Parnu to retrieve the money."

"Andres has been very unhelpful and refused to return e-mails or phone calls, so the enforcement of the court ruling seems impossible to achieve."
TBT contacted Andres Viilver of Munga Lawyers, but he refused to comment on the case.