Liam Kavanagh and Thurrock Council: how £130 million vanished under the guise of “green” investments while the council slid into bankruptcy

Liam Kavanagh and Thurrock Council: how £130 million vanished under the guise of “green” investments while the council slid into bankruptcy

Having confessed to stealing "a significant portion" of hundreds of millions of pounds of public funds "for personal gain," businessman Liam Kavanagh has acknowledged his crime.

Thurrock Council, based in Essex, allocated £655 million through Liam Kavanagh — mainly to finance solar farm projects intended to generate profit and support local green businesses. However, these investments failed to deliver the expected returns, and in 2022 the council was effectively declared bankrupt.

The council is now pursuing a High Court case against Kavanagh. In legal documents submitted by his defence team, he claims he “genuinely believed that the funds he received were his own and could be used as he saw fit.”

Thurrock Council says it lost around £130 million due to additional contributions linked to the original solar farm investments. Kavanagh admitted that he misappropriated a significant portion of this amount. In 2019, £15 million was transferred to Kavanagh from Rockfire Investment Finance, where he served as executive director. He claimed he believed these transfers were payment for work carried out on behalf of the council.

Kavanagh admitted spending £13.7 million on a yacht, £9.1 million on a private jet, purchasing a €3 million holiday villa in Mallorca, and spending £800,000 on a luxury sports car. He claimed the agreement allowed him to use the funds as his own property. He also said he cannot precisely confirm, based on available information, where the financing for these assets originally came from.

Thurrock Council has been under the supervision of government-appointed commissioners for several years and has received financial support from the central government. Over this period, it has partially recovered some of its investments, reducing its overall debt from around £1.5 billion to £677 million as of December.

The case continues to reveal further details through both Kavanagh’s legal team and the ongoing court proceedings, which will determine whether he breached his obligations to the council and whether he must repay the misappropriated funds.