Former council boss sub-let £1m home to sister
A former council boss has been found guilty of illegally sub-letting a £1m property to her sister for just £140 a week after buying herself a new five-bedroom home.
Kathryn Adedeji, 47, let out the two-bed maisonette in central London to Blessing Adedeji, 40, after moving into a £500,000 house.
She had been renting the property since 1998, but dodged official chanels to let the flat to her sister.
Blessing then illegally sub-let her own flat in Shadwell, east London to cover the rent for her new home in leafy Granville Square, King’s Cross.
Similar properties in the sought-after location have recently sold for more than £1m although the social housing unit is let an affordable rent to people on low oncomes.
The Adedeji sisters denied wrongdoing, but were each found guilty of unlawfully subletting a dwelling house after a trial at the Old Bailey.
Judge Noel Lucas told them they will not go to jail when he sentences them, but they could face a hefty fine and be forced to pay court costs.
The court heard Kathryn paid £140-a-week rent after moving into the property in November 1998.
She tried to legally swap flats with her sister in a ‘mutual exchange’, but the deal was refused.
‘The mutual exchange had failed, but she wanted to preserve the control of that property so she could allow her sister to live there and sublet it to her,’ said prosecutor Nicholas Ham.
‘What the prosecution say in this case is in around February 2014 Kathryn Adedeji bought her own property at 44 Dixon Road in another part of London, moved out of number 29 and at that point she sublet the property to her sister Blessing Adedeji.
‘She moved out of number 29, agreed Blessing would move in and Blessing would be paying her rent.’
Blessing, who had been a tenant in her social housing flat in Glasshouse Fields since 2008, then sublet her property to cover the rent.
But the pair were caught when suspicious housing association bosses made enquiries at Kathryn’s new address in South Norwood, southeast London and found her living there.
Blessing was discovered at the Granville Square property and the sisters were arrested and charged under the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Act.
Mr Ham said that following her arrest Kathryn admitted she knew what she had done, but insisted she had done it for her sister and made no gain herself.
When housing officers attended the Granville Square property shortly after the swap it is alleged Kathryn pretended she was still living there.
Kathryn Adedeji, of Dixon Road, South Norwood, and her sister, of (Flat 7, 62) Glasshouse Fields, Shadwell each denied, but both found guilty of unlawfully subletting a dwelling house.
Kathryn was acquitted of a further charge of fraud by making a false declaration to Circle Thirty Three Housing Trust that she was living at 29 Granville Square after she had moved out.
The pair will be sentenced on Thursday.
ENDS
