At the stroke of noon today at the heart of the rigged system, a hearing of our appeal of a decision of the 1st Tier Tribunal of the Property Chamber [which upheld an appeal by a prospective buyer, challenging the Land Registry’s decision to uphold our legal objection to ownership of a property being transferred to him], was convened by the Property Chamber’s Upper Tribunal at the Royal Courts of Justice in London [pictured above].
The whole case turned upon two issues:
1. Whether two LPA Receivers have the right to sell and transfer ownership of Ashquorn House in North Shields, which has been held in a family trust since it was acquired in 2003; and
2. Whether, in any event, the 1st Tier Tribunal should have set aside the appeal of the prospective buyer, which resulted in their decision to overturn our legal objection to the transfer of ownership.
For the purposes of clarifying the answers to these two serious questions, the Upper Tribunal ordered that both parties produce all evidence relied upon, including a Powers of Attorney Deed which the prospective buyer claims conferred such powers upon the receivers; without which, it has already been established in Bank of Scotland plc v Waugh & Others [2014], the receivers do not have the legal authority to act in the names of the trustees, whether in the sale of Ashquorn House or any other property.
The document produced by the prospective buyer is a Powers of Attorney Deed, in which the Lloyds Banking Group conferred powers upon its employees, with the express exclusion of the anybody employed by another firm. This necessarily excludes the receivers, who work for a company called DTZ. The document, therefore, does not confer the right to act in the names of the trustees in the disposition of an interest over the trust’s property.
Whilst the sustaining of that point should have been sufficient for the appeal to succeed, in and of itself, the written evidence submitted amply demonstrated that the other party did not comply with the Property Chamber’s order to provide us with a copy of that document within the time allowed, which automatically means that the 1st Tier Tribunal should have struck out his appeal of the Land Registry’s decision, under section 9(1) of the Tribunal Procedure (First Tier) (Property Chamber) Rules 2013, which clearly states:
“The proceedings or case, or the appropriate part of them, will automatically be struck out if the applicant failed to comply with a direction that stated that failure by the applicant to comply with the direction by a stated date would lead to the striking out of the proceedings of that part of them.”
Very occasionally, one manages to get one’s legal adversary in a corner from which they can only emerge in defeat; on the simple basis that the arguments have already been won and the facts speak for themselves. Now is such an occasion, so right on cue, the rigged system has contrived unsustainable grounds to dismiss the appeal.
The judge has done so on this occasion by erroneously claiming that:
a. It has not been proven to her that the second void and illegal mortgage over the property, which is an amended version of a void mortgage that was removed from the register for failing to comply with section 1(3) of the Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989, is invalid; and
b. She is not satisfied that the receivers were invalidly appointed, despite the fact that there is no valid and enforceable legal mortgage in existence, without which the right to appoint LPA Receivers cannot arise.
However, neither of those issues are relevant to this appeal, which is based entirely upon the non-existence of a valid Powers of Attorney Deed and the failure of the other party to adhere to the terms of the Property Chamber’s order relating to the production of documents.
Whilst the second issue was heard and acknowledged as being a valid ground, although not enough in her opinion for the appeal to succeed, the judge refused to deal with the first and primary issue – the POA point – by focusing on the above stated issues ,which are immaterial to these proceedings.
The last time we made an application to the Property Chamber, we were asking them to do the unthinkable and overturn the Land Registry’s decision to refuse to grant our application to cancel the original void mortgage over Ashquorn House; which they finally did in early 2015, after sitting on the decision for twenty months.
This time we were asking the Property Chamber’s Upper Chamber to overrule its Lower Chamber’s decision to overrule the Land Registry’s decision to uphold our objection to the transfer of ownership, which the judge should have granted upon the evidence alone.
Instead, she is going to order that we haven’t proved two points which we have not been asked to prove since October 22 2010, despite the undeniable facts that we proved that the first mortgage was illegal and void in 2014 at the same venue and the Land Registry agrees that the transfer of ownership should be canceled, on the grounds we have cited.
In other words, we have now proven beyond any doubt, to the High Curt and to the Land Registry, that the receivers do not have the legal authority to make any entries in the register in the names of the trustees; yet the judge today pretended otherwise, to protect the bank and its receivers from the consequences of their blatant frauds.
She almost certainly did so because, in the event justice was done, the Land Registry would have to deal with our renewed application to cancel all of the eleven mortgages we applied to cancel in 2013, which were made well before the properties were illegally sold by the receivers; on the ground that none of the mortgage deeds were properly witnessed, in breach of section 1(3) of the 1989 Act, as per Bank of Scotland plc v Waugh & Others [2014].
Despite the game-changing nature of our proceedings and their somewhat inevitable denouements, that is not the full extent of what would unfold in the event of our success in this appeal, which can be more specifically identified as an attempt to establish a rule of law which has the potential to prevent every sale of mortgaged property by a mortgagee-in-possession, since legal ownership is never taken by the banks to avoid Capital Gains Tax.
In short, the banks can only be relying upon the purported Powers of Attorney granted by a mortgagor in their Standard Mortgage Conditions, which, as we have already proven in Bank of Scotland plc v Waugh & Others [2014], cannot be conferred without a stand-alone Powers of Attorney Deed, which must comply with the Powers of Attorney Act 1971 and be executed by the donor of such powers.
The mind-blowing consequences of this point of law are that every sale of repossessed property, conveyed under non-existent Powers of Attorney by a bank’s solicitors, is rendered fraudulent, illegal and void; and that the Chief Land Registrar is liable for the losses incurred by every dispossessed mortgagor who succeeds in having such an illegal disposition canceled in an AP1 application to rectify the mistake in the register.
It therefore could not be clearer that the rigged system is doing all it can to prevent the establishment of a potential remedy for everybody who has been dispossessed of their property, under the purported authority of court orders which were founded upon fraudulent mortgage possession claims by the banks.
To put this in perspective, according to the Ministry of Justice, in excess of 750,000 properties were repossessed and sold by mortgagees, in the names of the respective residential mortgagors, over the last three decades. At an average price of just £100,000 per property, the Land Registry’s potential liability for the rectification of all those fraudulent entries is a staggering £75,000,000,000.
It is easy to grasp why her majesty’s judiciary would want to avert the possibility of every dispossessed mortgagor making such a claim for indemnification, since it would ultimately be her majesty’s treasury which would have to cover the cost of the compensation payouts.
It is also self-evident that, for this reason alone, no insurance company would even countenance offering a policy to any private legal entity whose officers wish to purchase the Land Registry, on the basis that only the treasury of a nation state could underwrite such potential losses.
Where we go from here will be obvious to those who have been following this interminable legal dispute since it began in June 2010 – we will exhaust all remaining routes of appeal, which means making an application for permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal, which presides at the same venue as the Upper Tribunal.
What transpires from there will be as consistent as ever because we will not be leaving the battlefield until the final battle has been won, for the purposes of which we might require your assistance in raising the funds required to fight today’s decision.
Either way, we would all like to express our gratitude for the support we have received over the past seven years. Rest assured that it will never be forgotten.
