the times | Friday April 8 2022 2GM 25
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it was said that the Johnsons learnt of
Spooner’s hotel venture while the
husband was on a pheasant shoot in
Hampshire in 2019.
In his ruling, the judge said that
Charles Johnson took the view that the
project would “give his wife, who did
interiors and gardens, something to
sink her teeth into”.
Spooner and his wife already knew
the Johnsons — both families lived
near Marlborough in Wiltshire — and
they told the judge that the club owner
had taken on the George’s lease from its
owner, Dame Dianne Thompson, who
was chief executive of Camelot Group
until 2014.
By 2019 Sally Johnson had stamped
her creative mark on the hotel, spend-
ing thousands of pounds on plants for
its Mediterranean-style garden.
The judge said that “the prospect of
high-profile and high-spending guests
was attractive to Mr Spooner, and it
was doubtless the failure of any of themever to materialise which was a factor in
the swift breakdown” of his relationship
with the Johnsons.
Spooner said that the Johnsons “kept
fobbing him off” and that there was “no
transparency [with regards to the]
items Sally was purchasing”.
In turn, the court was told that the
Johnsons accused Spooner of failing to
consult them over the development
plans and his alleged “personal use of
the hotel without accounting for it”.
Relations broke down entirely when
Charles Johnson asked Spooner to
“buy out” his wife, a move that trig-
gered protracted negotiations.
Spooner eventually agreed to pay
Sally Johnson £133,000 for her stake
but she later insisted that no conclusive
deal was agreed.
However, Judge Prentis found that
Johnson had agreed to sell her share
just as the financial impact of the
coronavirus pandemic was beginning
to be felt.A senior GP who stole more than
£1 million of public money to fund his
online gambling addiction has been
struck off.
Rumi Chhapia, 45, defrauded the
NHS out of a total of £1.13 million while
chasing jackpots on internet slot ma-
chines and roulette, in what was de-
scribed as “six weeks of madness”.
Chhapia, who earned almost
£200,000 a year, was sentenced last
year to three years and four months in
prison after admitting fraud. He has
now lost his licence to practise after a
medical tribunal.
After co-founding the Portsmouth
Primary Care Alliance (PPCA), a group
of 16 GP surgeries in Hampshire, Chha-
pia was put in charge of their accounts
in August 2020, when a colleague was
signed off sick.
Over a period of 41 days between
August 20 and September 30, the father
said: “I feel very deflated but... I do still
believe that the killer was telling the
truth. My mother was taken from us a
long time ago... but we hoped we were
going to be able to lay her to rest in a
more respectful way.”
Officers from the Met’s specialist
crime command worked with forensic
archaeologists and anthropologists and
Hertfordshire police during the search.
Mrs McKay’s murderers were con-
victed in 1970. Her family made a
breakthrough in December when they
confronted Nizamodeen Hosein, who
had been deported to Trinidad after
serving a 20-year sentence. His brother
and accomplice Arthur died in prison in- Throughout the trial, the broth-
ers had protested their innocence.
Nizamodeen Hosein said Mrs
McKay had died from a heart attack.
He said: “I never killed her.”
er — who is also a
racing driver and
racehorse owner —
argued with Johnson
over expenditure.
He accused the
Johnsons of having
failed to produce a stream
of wealthy guests to the
hotel as he alleged they
promised.
The High Court was told
that in 2020 Spooner agreed
to pay Sally Johnson
£133,000 for her
50 per cent stake in the
hotel, but that she later
sued him, claiming the
agreement had never been
reached.
Judge Sebastian Prentis
backed Spooner and
handed full control of the
hotel to him.
During the proceedings,Met calls off its search for
remains of Muriel McKay
Ben ElleryBan for gambler GP who stole £1.13m
of one, who had become “seduced” by
online gambling, made 65 transfers
from the PPCA accounts to his own.
After being confronted about the
missing money, Chhapia, from South-
sea, claimed that he had been hacked
and was the victim of a cybercrime.
Despite this, however, he continued
to embezzle funds.
The alarm was eventually raised by
the PPCA’s former finance chief, who
saw that £600,000 had disappeared
from the accounts.
Ian Comfort, chairman of the Medi-
cal Practitioners Tribunal, said: “Dr
Chhapia placed patients at risk of harm
and breached a fundamental tenet of
the profession by taking funds that
were necessary for patient care.”
Comfort added that the tribunal had
considered that this was not only a
single instance of fraud but several.
The care alliance said Chhapia’s
actions had led to GP surgeries losing
trust in the body and that reputationaldamage had reduced its overall budget.
Mark Swindells, director of the PPCA,
said some colleagues had even sought
counselling to deal with the betrayal.
Of the £1.13 million he embezzled,
Chhapia paid back £238,000 from his
own accounts, while, unusually, the
gambling companies agreed to cover
the remaining amount after the dis-
graced doctor wrote pleading letters to
them.
Chhapia gambled a total of £2.5 mil-
lion but had managed to recoup
£1.2 million. He had already remort-
gaged his home, sold his car and asked
friends to loan him more than
£300,000 to fund his habit.
At his trial, his lawyer said Chhapia
felt he was always “one win away” from
financial security. Sentencing him at
the time, Judge Keith Cutler said: “Your
duty should have been to provide the
very best care to your patients and that
should have been the pinnacle, but you
were dishonest.”Laurence Sleator
The police have ended their search for
the remains of a woman who was mur-
dered more than 50 years ago after fail-
ing to find anything at the farm where
her killer claimed she was buried.
The killer of Muriel McKay, who died
in a bungled kidnapping in late 1969
after being mistaken for Anna Mur-
doch, the former wife of Rupert Mur-
doch, owner of The Sun and later The
Times and The Sunday Times, told her
family last year that he had buried her
at a farm in Hertfordshire.
The Metropolitan Police have called
off a week-long search at the property
after clearing land, digging and using
ground-penetrating radar.
Mrs McKay’s daughter, Dianne
McKay, 81, said she believes her
mother’s remains are at the farm. SheHoward Spooner, a motor-racing
friend of the Duke of Sussex, has won a
High Court battle over a hotel on the
Isle of Wight for which he once had
grand plans.
Famed as the “Chelsea club king”
who once ran a London club frequent-
ed by royalty, Spooner, 52, aimed to
transform the 17-bedroom, 17th-centu-
ry George Hotel in Yarmouth into a
celebrity retreat for A-listers from both
sides of the Atlantic. He even touted the
island itself — long written off by smug
urbanites as being trapped in the 1950s
— as Britain’s St Tropez.
However, his dream of bringing the
Cote d’Azur to the Solent became a
nightmare of costly litigation with his
business partner, a former weather
presenter.
Sally Johnson, 57 — who, as Sally
Faber, once read the weather on Carl-
ton TV — had become a designer and
was to bring a creative touch to the
interiors and gardens of the hotel,
where rooms cost up to £465.
A judge at the High Court in
London was told that the
overhaul of the George was
partly funded by Johnson’s
millionaire polo-playing
husband Charles “Brook”
Johnson, 75. They had
planned to attract a
wealthy clientele to the
George, including “old
rockers”, yachtsmen,
polo players and “many
powerful Americans”,
the judge was told.
The Johnsons were
said to be enthusiastic
about the joint venture
with Spooner, who had
run the club Public with
Guy Pelly, a childhood
friend of the Duke of
Cambridge and
Prince Harry. It
closed in 2012 after
neighbours com-
plained that too
many admirers were
gathering to catch a
glimpse of Harry.
In 2019, however, Spoon-
Club king wins battle royal on isle of strife
A friend of Prince Harry
fought a former weather
presenter after their joint
hotel venture went sour,
Jonathan Ames writes
Howard Spooner’s vision to turn the
George Hotel in Yarmouth into a
celebrity retreat attracted Sally
and Charles “Brook” Johnson, below,
the High Court was
told, but ended
in litigationITV/SHUTTERSTOCK