Theresa May has accepted large donations from a property tycoon who is profiting from an apartment block rife with prostitution in one of the wealthiest areas of London.
An investigation by The Sunday Times has established that more than 100 prostitutes are listed on websites as available for business in the building in the heart of Chelsea owned by the multimillionaire Christopher Moran.
The block, Chelsea Cloisters, has so many prostitutes using it as a base for paid sex that the men who frequent its corridors have referred to it as “Sodom and Gomorrah” and the “infamous 10 floors of whores”.
Its 670 apartments generate millions of pounds in rent or service charges for Moran’s company every year. Moran, 70, who has described himself as “astronomically wealthy”, has donated more than £290,000 to the Conservative Party both personally and through his companies.
In recent weeks, reporters from The Sunday Times were able to make 40 bookings with prostitutes using 23 apartments in the building — 15 of them in flats rented from Moran’s company.
This appeared to be just a small sample of the prostitutes advertised on websites as being based in Chelsea Cloisters. One of the escort agencies boasted that it had 100 women available at the premises on a single night — and another website advertised more than 100 prostitutes as being based there.
There is no suggestion that Moran has any involvement with the prostitution. In a statement through his lawyers, Moran made clear that his management took a “zero-tolerance” approach to prostitution in the building.
Our inquiries found that a number of the women using the apartments for selling sex had come to London from Romania. Last summer, a parliamentary report on the sex trade identified Romania as the biggest problem country for victims of sexual exploitation coming to the UK.
Last night the Metropolitan police was considering an investigation after this newspaper presented its evidence to the head of its human trafficking unit at New Scotland Yard. Kevin Hyland, the former UK anti-slavery commissioner, said there had been “previous cases of [suspected] trafficking linked to Chelsea Cloisters”.
This weekend there were calls for Theresa May to hand Moran’s donations to trafficking charities. The prime minister has promised to eradicate human trafficking in the UK by 2030.
The Labour MP Gavin Shuker, who chaired the all-party parliamentary group which wrote a report on the sex trade this summer, said the findings of our investigation suggested that Chelsea Cloisters could be the “biggest brothel” in Britain. “Theresa May must now give that money to charities that assist victims of human trafficking, and use her powers to change the law to tackle demand,” he said.
Moran has a personal fortune of £404m, according to The Sunday Times Rich List, and mixes with royalty including the Queen and Prince Harry. He owns the freehold to all the apartments in Chelsea Cloisters as well as the leasehold to more than 200 of them.
His company levies a service charge on all the properties in the building, which can be up to £6,000 a year, and has an office on the ground floor which rents out up to 250 apartments on short-term lets. His Rolls-Royce can often be seen outside the building while he works inside.
The prostitutes work among the many tourists and permanent residents who also stay in Chelsea Cloisters. Their availability is blatantly advertised on websites by agencies who fix up meetings between the women and their clients. Two of the escort agencies claim to be based in the building.
There are also dozens of online reviews by men who have paid for sex with women in Chelsea Cloisters over many years. One man describes how he pinned a woman to the wall by her throat during one paid-for session and carried out a violent sex act on her. Others remark they are never challenged when they enter the building.
While contacting the agencies our reporter received an anonymous call from a man who said he knew the reporter’s home address and that he should stop what he was doing. “It’s a dangerous line of work,” he threatened.
More than half the women we booked were using rooms owned and rented out by Moran’s company Realreed. He used the company to make just over £140,000 of his donations to the Conservatives.
The Conservative MP Greg Hands says a resident complained to him that the building’s management had been alerted to the prostitute issue, but “were not appearing to do anything about it”. Hands reported this complaint to the police.
Yesterday Moran’s lawyers categorically denied he had acquiesced with or tolerated any prostitution in the building and said he had not profited from its proceeds. The lawyer said Moran had little or no involvement in the day-to-day running of the building. The lawyer said Chelsea Cloisters was one of the most successful and prestigious serviced apartment complexes in London and had well over 1,000 guests at any time.
He said that on the small number of occasions that there had been reports an escort was working in the building, the management had acted swiftly and decisively, including by starting eviction proceedings. He said the building’s management had co-operated fully with the single recent police investigation relating to a privately owned apartment of which it was aware.
