Property tycoon found guilty over £3.5m Thames houseboat fraud

A property tycoon has been found guilty of a £3.5m fraud over claims he sold houseboats on a stretch of the river Thames that could not be lived in.

Myck Djurberg, 64, was convicted on Tuesday (19 March 2024) at Kingston Crown Court in London for fraudulently selling houseboats without appropriate planning permission.

Djurberg purchased the Hampton Riviera Boat Yard in Richmond in 2011 and built a series of expensive houseboats with the hope of developing the boatyard into a leisure marina resort. However, he did not obtain the appropriate planning permission for the boats and sold five of them without residential mooring licences.

Djurberg had assured his clients that the houseboats could be used for residential purposes and that they would have no issues in mooring them long-term. After the sales had gone through and the purchasers moved into their houseboats, they discovered that Djurberg did not have planning permission for the project and the moorings he had sold were unlawful.

After a police investigation, it was found that Djurberg had only acquired planning permission for leisure mooring, not residential. He had also not paid the Environment Agency for this licence. The local authority, Richmond Borough Council, which had served several enforcement notices on Djurberg, attended the location and removed some of the unlawful pontoons.

“Djurberg did not have planning consent in place to use boats for residential purposes, as dwellings nor for commercial business occupation,” says Andrew West, specialist prosecutor for the CPS. “Despite this, he fraudulently sold five houseboats, financially gaining from the misfortune of his customers.

“Following this conviction, we will pursue confiscation proceedings to ensure that Djurberg pays back the money he gained through this criminal operation.”

In a civil law claim in the High Court in 2017, one of the buyers, Oliver Small, said that Djurberg had promised him and his wife that they would be part of a “dream residential community”, according to the Times.

In 2021, Djurberg was convicted of assault after being filmed threatening a tenant with a roofer’s tool after the tenant queried “additional and unwarranted” service charges. In a video published by the Daily Mail, which was used as evidence in the case, the millionaire can be seen chasing the tenant, shouting ‘I’ll break your f***ing head’ and slapping him with gardening gloves in a row over £5,500 charges at the west London boatyard.

Djurberg will be sentenced for fraud on 27 March 2024. The CPS has confirmed its intention to pursue his assets, including his extravagant grade II-listed chalet, worth £3.5m, which was imported to the UK from Switzerland and rebuilt in Surrey in 1882.