Candy brothers’ private eye accused in £28m lawsuit
A private detective – working on behalf of the Candy brothers, the multimillion-pound property developers – posed as a middleman for the Saudi royal family, according to allegations made in a London court case. The detective allegedly tried to blag confidential information from the buyer of one of the Candy brothers’ luxury flats. The £28m lawsuit, filed by a former owner of one of the ultra-chic flats at the One Hyde Park Development, threatens to reignite a scandal over the use of private investigators by blue-chip companies and blows apart the secrecy surrounding the residents of the block, where some apartments have sold for more than £100m. Christian and Nicholas Candy are being sued along with others, including Project Grande. This was the joint venture that Christian Candy’s company, CPC, had with Qatar’s former prime minister to build the high-end development in London’s Knightsbridge. Geoffrey Logue, who agreed to buy an apartment in 2007 while the £2bn residence block was still being completed, states in a court claim that CPC hired RISC Management, a detective agency, and Clifford Knuckey, a private investigator who worked first at RISC and then Hermes Forensic Solutions, during an escalating dispute over the floor plan of Mr Logue’s apartment. Mr Knuckey posed as an estate agent for a Russian family and as a "representative of the Saudi royal family" in an attempt to track down Mr Logue in April 2010 – according to Mr Logue’s court claim, seen by the Financial Times. Mr Logue also alleges that he received "another strange call from someone who claimed to be a representative of Vodafone customer services". He said Vodafone informed him that an unauthorised person had tried to access his mobile-phone account. Methods such as blagging and so-called pretexting – posing as someone else to elicit information – came under parliamentary scrutiny last summer as part of a probe into the use of rogue detectives by blue-chip companies across the City. The Information Commissioner announced in October that 19 of these companies would be investigated. Mr Knuckey and the chief executive of RISC Management, who are both former police officers, have since been arrested in connection with a separate investigation into alleged bribery of police by private investigators. They both deny wrongdoing and have been bailed without charge. Mr Knuckey declined to comment and referred all queries on the Logue matter to Candy & Candy. He is not a party to the lawsuit and therefore has not had an opportunity to file a response to the allegations. The brothers and CPC maintain in their defence that, while Mr Knuckey was retained to locate Mr Logue and serve him with court papers, the detective reported directly to Stewarts Law, a firm of solicitors that the Candys used. The Candys are in turn suing Stewarts Law, alleging breach of contract and negligence, which the law firm denies. The brothers’ defence throws light on what it describes as the "high-risk, high-profile project for which positive publicity was of paramount importance". It says CPC instructed RISC to investigate Mr Logue "to understand the sort of person he was" in the light of threats he was making to sue and seek publicity. It adds: "Had it not been for the fact that Mr Logue had been introduced by Savills [the estate agents], which was familiar with the Logue family, such an investigation would have been commissioned before [Project Grande] entered into the agreement for lease."