British investor Charles Cole was scammed into buying a property in Romania, an investment opportunity which brought him on the brink of bankruptcy. Cole, a 46-year old wealthy Brit, bought a 60-hectare land plot in Bucharest suburbs- Buftea in 2007 and borrowed around EUR 3.5 million to finance a residential real estate project there, according to the Daily Mail. The loan's collateral was his house and his business in the UK. “‘I was talked into making the investment. I had no understanding there was any big risk: I was very naïve,” he says, without naming those who scammed him into the project.

But the project in Romania never went off the ground, and planning permissions were forever delayed, while bank installments kept coming. Now Charles Cole and his family – wife and four kids- risk losing their home in Devon, as the loan payment in due in April this year. His debt reached EUR 6 million.

Cole has started a legal case in an attempt to recover his money, even though the bank is unwilling to wait for the result of an investigation. In the meanwhile, he and his family had to cut back on life expenses, forcing some of their kids out of the boarding school.

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editor@romania-insider.com