Legal Protection Group owner Arron Banks is running after former Deal or No Deal host Noel Edmonds, who the insurance tycoon claims owes him £1.3 million.
The sum is said to be in relation to fees for the insurance policy which covered the presenter’s legal costs when his business Unique Group took on Lloyds Banking Group in a high-profile case involving the HBOS loans scam.
A report by The Mail on Sunday cited Banks’ camp as saying: “The £1 million premium became due in July 2019 when Mr Edmonds reached an out-of-court settlement with the bank. We wrote to Mr Edmonds in August 2019 pointing out the policy conditions, but he ignored the communications.
“We have established that Mr Edmonds emigrated in a hurry shortly after the settlement. His solicitors have deliberately obstructed and delayed, but now that we have tracked down his hiding place we are seeking to serve papers on him in New Zealand to recover the money.”
A source close to Edmonds, meanwhile, disputed the liability, as well as the idea that Edmonds had “fled.”
As for Banks, the ‘Brexit bad boy’ is determined to make Edmonds pay.
“I’m fuming,” he told the publication. “Mr Edmonds has run off to a lush part of New Zealand with my money, dishonestly trying to hide from his debtors. We backed him when no-one else would in his fight with the banks; he won and then he headed for New Zealand without even acknowledging his debt to me and my company.”
Banks’ warning? “No deal is not an option – cough up, or I will drag you back to the UK to face the music.”
Meanwhile the matter is bound to be a legal tussle, according to Edmonds’ side, which is reportedly looking at the issue of litigation funding.
