For years, Sandra and Gregory Kocinski had been looking for a holiday villa in the Mediterranean that would eventually serve as a retirement home in the sun, away from the cold winters and rain of Leeds. Then, in summer 2003, they went on holiday to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a breakaway part of the island that describes itself as “the untouched pearl of the Mediterranean”.

“We found northern Cyprus to be as beautiful as the brochures said, and decided to look at properties to buy,” says Sandra Kocinski, 47, a script supervisor for the television soap Emmerdale. The couple plumped for a three-bedroom bungalow, for only £49,000, in the Hzomer development, five miles from the popular coastal town of Kyrenia. The property was due to be completed two years later.

The Kocinskis found the property through Unwin Estate Agents, a British-owned agency in northern Cyprus. Making their first property purchase abroad, the couple were reassured by the fact that the complex was being built by another British-run firm, Aga Development, owned by Gary Robb, a “podgy, jack-the-lad figure” from Newcastle.

Before they left, the couple signed a purchase contract with Robb and, once back in Leeds, sent their first payment of £11,000 to his company via Unwin.

The Kocinskis returned to northern Cyprus in April 2004, expecting to see builders hard at work on their future home. Instead, the development was a shambles. Not even the foundations had been laid. “We were reassured that this is northern Cyprus, and that’s how it’s done here,” Sandra says. “ ‘Don’t worry, everything will be okay,’ Unwin told us.”

The couple returned home and, as agreed, sent a second payment of £10,000 to Aga. They received an e-mail from Unwin informing them that the foundations had been laid and that work was progressing. In December that year, the agents e-mailed them to say work was complete.

When the Kocinskis flew out to take a look at their “completed” property, however, they were stunned. “We found the house in a terrible condition,” Sandra recalls. “There was no water, no electricity. Fixtures and fittings were damaged or missing, and there were remains of human excrement inside the property. Plus, the plot sizes had all shrunk to squeeze in extra houses.” Horrified, they returned to Britain, but then, “in good faith”, made a final payment of £14,000.

In November 2005 came yet another bizarre twist in the affair. Returning to the island again, the couple were delighted to see that their property had been completed – but, to their horror, they found it was now occupied by two British men, who claimed to have bought the property as a “resale”. It was not clear who had sold it to them.

Despairing of getting hold of the property, the Kocinskis went to court in northern Cyprus to try to retrieve their money. So far, they have been unable to recover a penny.

Formed after the partition of the island in 1974, northern Cyprus is not recognised by any country apart from Turkey. This has turned it into a potential minefield for foreign purchasers , many of whom have “bought” a property, only to find it is still claimed by a former Greek owner who fled the invading Turkish forces.

Unfortunately for the Kocinskis, northern Cyprus has no extradition treaty with this country. As a result, it has become a haven for criminals on the run from the UK, be they high-profile figures such as Asil Nadir, the Polly Peck tycoon, who fled there in 1993 to avoid charges involving theft of £34m, or humbler criminals.

Robb, it turns out, was among them. Together with his brother, James, he ran a string of nightclubs across the northeast in the 1990s. They included the notorious Colosseum, in Stockton, which was raided by police in 1996, who seized drugs worth £10,000. Both brothers were arrested and charged with drug offences. James Robb was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years, but Gary fled to northern Cyprus.

“As soon as he moves to a jurisdiction that has an extradition agreement with Britain, we can make moves to arrest him,” said Cleveland police.

Robb said last week that work on the complex had stopped because the authorities in northern Cyprus had frozen his company’s bank accounts. “They made an accusation of money-laundering, but I’ve never been charged with it,” he said. “Once everything is released, we can solve the problem, but at the moment, everything is stopped.”

Unwin Estate Agents, meanwhile, has distanced itself from the development. “We were not in cahoots with Aga,” says Mark Unwin, the agency’s founder. “We just did the marketing.” He insisted his company had “severed ties” with Robb in late 2004, but admitted that he continued to send e-mails to existing clients.

The Kocinskis are not the only buyers to have been allegedly conned by Robb, who has up to 500 Britons on his books, according to the recently formed Aga Buyers Action Group. Its 300 members have invested, on average, tens of thousands of pounds in Aga, but one buyer from Milton Keynes – who has declined to be named – paid more than £1.6m. To date, none has got their money back.

agabuyersactiongroup@yahoo.co.uk

Find homes in Northern Cyprus on propertyfinder.com by clicking here

To search for properties for sale in Cyprus on properazzi.com, click here

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