Southwark Council has obtained one of London’s largest Proceeds of Crime Orders from an unscrupulous landlord who sub-divided three flats in London Bridge into around 20 cramped studios and bedsits - putting profits before the quality of life of his tenants.

Landlord Andre Charles Trepel, was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £35,000 costs at the Inner London Crown Court on 17 April 2019 for breaching a planning enforcement notice, with a further £1,000 fine for his company – No.1 (London) Ltd.

Most importantly, Trepel and the company will also have to pay back £1,118,601 criminal benefit under Proceeds of Crime confiscation orders within the next three months or he will face a seven year prison sentence.

The council originally won a planning prosecution against Trepel, aged 74 from Trinec in the Czech Republic, for his illegal conversion of the three flats within 2-4 London Bridge Street in 2010. He was fined and ordered to return the property back to its original condition.

Subsequent investigations by Southwark’s planning enforcement team in 2015 and 2016 showed that little had been done to rectify the situation and further charges were brought in 2017. Trepel was again found guilty, but his sentencing was deferred while the council’s trading standards team conducted a financial investigation into the profits he had gathered from renting the properties, which was deemed to be around £1.2m in gross rent on his London Bridge Street properties since 2011.