A PROPERTY tycoon at the centre of a £750 million fraud planned to build a “super-yacht for the super-rich” with money he had conned out of banks, a court in London has heard.

Achilleas Kallakis (43) wanted to rent the luxurious vessel – which would feature its own helipad – out for £1 million a week, jurors were told yesterday.

The fraud was carried out using forged documents, some of which were unwittingly signed off by solicitors for just £5 a time, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Mr Kallakis, who amassed a huge property empire through the sophisticated scam, borrowed £6 million from the Bank of Scotland to buy the boat which was to be stripped down and renovated from scratch, the court was told.

However, the bulk of the money for other ventures was borrowed from AIB, which lost £56 million when Mr Kallakis went out of business.

George Carter-Stephenson QC, defending, told the court: “The purpose of the super-yacht was to fill it with facilities, including a helicopter landing pad on the deck, to be chartered to the super-rich for about £1 million a week.

“The project involved stripping it down to just the hull and building it from scratch. There was the potentially for a lot of money to be made.”

However, Victor Temple QC, prosecuting, said £2.5 million which was borrowed for the project ended up with Mr Kallakis’s company, Atlas Management Corporation Ltd, with no explanation for how it got there.

The court heard Mr Kallakis and “right-hand man” Alex Williams (43) would regularly get documents signed off by solicitors who became an unwitting part of the fraud.

Solicitor Timothy Bamford said his firm, which was situated near Mr Kallakis’s swanky Mayfair office, did not review the contents of documents when they were asked to act as witnesses to verify them and admitted they did not check the identity of the person requiring the signature, aside from asking them verbally if they were who they said they were.

Through the scam, Mr Kallakis was able to fund a millionaire’s lifestyle, which included a fleet of luxury cars and a string of London properties, the court heard.

Alf Burgess, a chartered surveyor who managed Mr Kallakis’s property portfolio, said: “Mr Kallakis had several cars – a Bentley Azure, another Bentley, a Scaglietti Ferrari and a Mercedes – which he asked me to insure.

“They were registered in his wife Pamela’s name, the chauffeur’s name and a Mr S Kallakis.”

Asked who “S Kallakis” was, Mr Burgess replied: “I believed that to be him he was referring to, Mr Kallakis.”

But the court heard Mr Kallakis sometimes used different aliases.

Mr Burgess said: “I once heard Mr Kallakis using the name Steve Williams in a phone conversation.

“I didn’t query it as I assumed he wanted to keep his identity secret from the person he was speaking to, but there was mail that came for him in the office under that name Steve Williams.”

The surveyor, who worked for Mr Kallakis between 2003 and 2009, told jurors Mr Kallakis lived in a property in the exclusive Brompton Square in Kensington, while Mr Williams had property in nearby Egerton Gardens and later Fulham.

Rodney Rezler, who was appointed chief accountant at Atlas Management Corporation, told how he was led to a basement room when he started, where only one computer worked.

Despite purporting to have assets in excess of $1 billion, Atlas Management Corporation Ltd was operating as if it was about to go bankrupt, jurors were told.

The jury also heard how Mr Kallakis, who claims to come from a wealthy Greek shipping dynasty dating back 200 years, asked accountants to cash cheques for him for up to £20,000 at a time.

Mr Temple said money was coming in but “almost immediately coming out again.”

Mr Rezler, a chartered accountant, told the court: “On the day I arrived I was led to a small basement room where there was 1½ working computers. They were not networked. I managed after a few days to scrounge a computer for myself. This was a laptop where the keys would fall off as I typed.

“There was no company system as such. There were little pools of information sitting on individual computers, some of which had been in the accounts office and had now moved to unknown places.”

Mr Rezler said the accounts were so “scattered” it was “impossible” to check the rents were being paid on company properties.

Mr Kallakis and Mr Williams deny two counts of conspiracy to defraud, 13 counts of forgery, five counts of fraud by false representation, two counts of money laundering and one count of obtaining a money transfer by deception.

The trial continues.