Buyer's anger at fugitive's £18m bid (From The Northern Echo)

Buyer's anger at fugitive's £18m bid

2:03am Thursday 15th May 2008 in

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A SUSPECTED drugs baron who has spent more than ten years on the run from police is trying to raise £18m to finish a controversial Mediterranean building project.

Former Teesside nightclub owner Gary Robb says he wants the money to finish developments he started in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).

Mr Robb, 45, fled to the country in 1997 rather than stand trial for serious drugs offences.

Once on the Mediterranean island, he set up a construction business building luxury villas.

However, it all turned sour when building work stopped with thousands of homes still to be completed and hundreds of British buyers left out of pocket.

Mr Robb now claims a bank has pledged to loan him £10m and an investment group has put up a further £8m, so he can finish the homes and other hotel projects.

He told the Cyprus Today newspaper: "Although £18m is a lot of money, it has to be measured against my assets in the TRNC, which I have built up since arriving here and which are worth about £100m.

"These have been used as security against the loan."

However, British buyers say they are sceptical about Mr Robb's claims that he wants to finish the villas.

Sandra Kocinski, an Emmerdale script writer, paid Robb £35,000 for a villa that took years to complete and was then apparently re-sold without her permission.

She said: "Gary Robb says his assets now amount to £100m.

"He has more than enough to finish building the few houses his customers paid for, and return the money to those customers of his he double-sold.

"What's stopping him?

"I am disgusted by what that man and his accomplices have done to my family and to other decent hard-working people."

Cleveland Police said an arrest warrant for Mr Robb was still active and he would be arrested if he ever returned to Britain.

Mr Robb owned several nightclubs across the region, including the Colosseum, in Norton Road, Stockton.

He was arrested in 1996 after a raid on the club by more than 200 officers.

His elder brother, James, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after he admitted allowing the nightclub to be used to supply ecstasy and amphetamines.