This Billionaire Landlord Bullied Journalists Into Deleting Negative Coverage of Him

A billionaire landlord bullied an outlet into deleting unflattering coverage of him and unsuccessfully pressured several others, including Novara Media.

Sunday Times rich-listed John Christodoulou, who is British-Cypriot but resides in the tax haven of Monaco, and is worth a reported £2.6bn, falsely told LandlordZone he had repaid the £263,555.69 he owed tenants of two Hackney properties.

Christodoulou wrote to the industry publication, which had 605,000 unique visitors in the year to April 2024, asserting that the 16 court-mandated repayment orders had been settled since LandlordZone published its article about them in April.

“Given that the article currently reflects a situation implying ongoing misconduct or non-compliance, I kindly request you to removing [sic] it entirely to prevent further reputational harm, especially as the matter has been concluded in accordance with the law and all tenant claims have been satisfied,” he wrote.

In fact, Christodoulou has not to date paid any of the 47 current and former tenants of Simpson House and Olympic House whom he owes money (in a separate case, Christodoulou settled with six tenants living in a dilapidated building, St John’s Court, paying them £44,587.46 to avoid further legal action).

Fearing legal action, LandlordZone removed its accurate reportage soon after Christodoulou’s email.

Asked repeatedly by Novara Media whether he had intentionally misled LandlordZone into removing its article, Christodoulou did not respond.

While refusing to pay his tenants – even transferring ownership of his properties between his various companies in an apparent attempt to avoid payment – Christodoulou is expending significant energy censoring coverage of his unlawful behaviour.

A ‘rogue landlord’.

Christodoulou’s troubles began early during the Covid-19 pandemic, when his tenants in Simpson House and Olympic House, two large residential blocks on Somerford Grove in Hackney, east London, requested a 20% rent reduction and a temporary stay on evictions.

Christodoulou refused, suggesting via his letting agent that renters use unspent lunch and holiday money to pay full rent. Tenant organisers living in the block claim that Christodoulou later targeted them with eviction.

Christodoulou’s tenants soon discovered there was another way of challenging their landlord: in the courts. They found that several of Christodoulou’s properties did not have the necessary licenses required for houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) – in Hackney, where three or more unrelated people live together in a single property – meaning tenants could be repaid up to 12 months’ rent via rent repayment orders (RRO).

After an initial group of Somerford Grove renters won £18,420.96 at a tribunal in July 2021, dozens of others lodged RRO applications against companies owned by Christodoulou. Three years later, in March last year, a court awarded them a combined £234,298.72, thought to be the largest combined RRO ever mandated by a court since they were introduced in 2016. The ruling brought the total Christodoulou owes tenants of Somerford Grove to £263,555.69.

Christodoulou has since transferred ownership of both Simpson and Olympic House to other companies he owns, despite his lawyers having told the tribunal that he had no intention of disposing of Simpson House. The companies that originally owned the two properties have gone into liquidation. Tenants have struggled to recoup the money they’re owed from the liquidated companies’ administrators.

Christodoulou’s lawyers, Anthony Gold LLP, stopped representing him shortly before his appeal of the tribunal decision was due to be heard.

Yet for the most part, Christoudoulou’s bad behaviour – “the respondent could only be described as a rogue landlord”, one judge said of him – appears not to have caught up with him in the ultra-wealthy circles in which he generally moves. Days before one housing court found against Christoulou, three England footballers partied aboard his superyacht off the Greek island of Mykonos. In May last year, the royal family of Monaco gave Christodoulou an award in recognition of his “exceptional philanthropic contributions” via his charity, the Yianis Christodoulou Foundation; Prince Albert II of Monaco had already in 2022 given Christodoulou a goodwill ambassador award.

This reputation as a businessman and philanthropist is one Christodoulou has worked hard to create – and will not allow to be tarnished by reporting on his business conduct. With outlets besides LandlordZone, he wasn’t so lucky.

‘I hope you can appreciate the human side of this issue.’

In May, John Christodoulou wrote to Novara Media from his personal email address. The email requested that Novara Media remove two articles about him – one authored by Sophie K Rosa about his dispute with his tenants during the Covid-19 pandemic, the other by me, about his tenants’ successful legal action against him – not by removing them from its website, but rather by deindexing them so that they weren’t visible in Google search results.

“While I fully respect your right to publish journalism that holds public figures accountable,” he wrote, “I am reaching out today with a sincere and personal request. It has now been nearly five years since the events described in that piece, and in that time, much has changed – both professionally and personally.”

Christodoulou claimed that the articles had had “a significant and deeply distressing impact on both myself and my family”, causing his children to be bullied and doing “long-standing damage to my reputation, despite my efforts to move forward and contribute positively through philanthropy and business practices.”

“I hope you can appreciate the human side of this issue and the toll it continues to take,” Christodoulou added.

Deindexing the articles, he said, was a compromise: “This would allow the content to remain accessible for archival and transparency purposes while helping to reduce the ongoing and disproportionate harm it is causing in my personal life,” he wrote. Christodoulou followed up on the email three times in the next 11 days.

Novara Media declined Christodoulou’s request. Christodoulou replied, asking that Novara Media “atleast [sic] remove my name from the article”. Novara Media did not respond.

A fake Tumblr.

Six weeks later, in early July, Google notified Novara Media that it had delisted Sophie K Rosa’s article from Google search results following complaints that the article violated UK copyright law. Here’s where things get weird.

The person who complained to Google (or rather, to its third-party aggregator of complaint notices, Lumen, from which Google sources copyright infringement information) falsely claimed that Sophie K Rosa’s article illegally duplicated a post from Tumblr. The Tumblr post was published on the page of an account set up fraudulently – in my name.

In other words, there was a Rivkah Brown Tumblr account with a blog post on it about Christodoulou – but I don’t have a Tumblr page, and I hadn’t written that article.

The account holder had republished Sophie K Rosa’s article in a post backdated to one day before Novara Media’s article, making it appear like the original poster and therefore the copyright holder. This allowed the complainant to claim that Novara Media’s article was an illegal copy and request that Google delist Novara Media’s article from its search results.

Then, in mid-August, Novara Media received a similar copyright notice regarding my article. This time, the Lumen complainant was someone impersonating me, and the alleged original content was my own X/Twitter post of the article.

Both my article and Sophie K Rosa’s continue to be hidden in Google search results.

Novara Media does not have any evidence that Christodoulou complained to Lumen under fake identities (including mine), and Christodoulou denies it, saying the DCMA takedown notices were “not created or submitted by me”.

“I have only submitted requests to your website for deindexing specific URLs. I did not file, authorise, or initiate any DMCA takedown notices,” he added.

A pattern of behaviour.

But while the source of the takedown notices remains a mystery, it is not only Novara Media of whom Christodoulou has made deindexing requests. Also in May last year, Christodoulou wrote to Leasehold Knowledge Partnership (LKP), the secretariat of the all-party parliamentary group for leasehold and commonhold reform. In it, he listed five articles about him by LKP (which can be found here, here, here, here and here), and asked that they be deindexed.

Christodoulou was not contesting the facts of the articles, his email said, but their continued presence distressed him and his family, presenting a one-sided view of a complex situation. LKP declined Christodoulou’s deindexing request and heard nothing further either from him or Google.

Other outlets, property specialist outlets The Negotiator and Property Industry Eye, also received deindexing notices from Google regarding articles about Christodoulou’s property dealings following spurious copyright violation complaints, some also originating in fraudulent Tumblr posts which had, as with Sophie K Rosa’s article, been backdated to one day before the original articles.

In October, local newspaper The Hackney Citizen received a copyright infringement notice from Google regarding one of its articles about Christodoulou, which a complainant wrongly alleged was originally published in this Tumblr post.

The since-deleted LandlordZone article was also subject to a copyright complaint shortly after Christodoulou wrote to the outlet.

Christoudoulou denies submitting these copyright infringement complaints to Lumen, saying he only wrote to outlets requesting that their articles about him be deindexed.

Google has since restored some of the articles to its search results following appeals from publishers. Some – including the piece in The Hackney Citizen – remain invisible in Google searches.

Christoudoulou has a history of attempting to suppress discussion of his conduct as a landlord. In 2018, a law firm acting on his behalf wrote to then-MP for Limehouse and Poplar, Jim Fitzpatrick, in whose constituency Christodoulou owns several properties.

The email asked that Fitzpatrick cancel his forthcoming housing debate, claiming it was subject to the sub judice rule, which prevents MPs or Lords from referring to a current or impending court case, despite parliamentary privilege.

Fitzpatrick described Christodoulou’s email in parliament as a “heavy-handed” and “wholly inappropriate” attempt at “gagging … MPs from raising matters of concern for their constituents”.

Unlike other media outlets contacted by Christoudoulou, LandlordZone chose not to have it out with the billionaire landlord, conceding to his request and removing its article about him (an archived copy of which can be found here) from its website. A source at the platform suggested to Novara Media that it may have been susceptible to pressure since its owner is not a publisher but the insurance company Hamilton Fraser, whose shareholders would be loath to get into a protracted legal battle with someone as deep-pocketed as Christodoulou.

A spokesperson for the London Renters Union said: “It’s outrageous that billionaire landlord Christodoulou is seeking to have critical coverage of him taken down after profiting from unlicensed HMOs. To date, the majority of our members [in Somerford Grove] have not received a single penny from [John Christodoulou].

“The fact that a billionaire can avoid paying over £260,000 of compensation following a tribunal ruling in our members’ favour goes to show just how rigged our housing system is. That’s why tenants in this country need a legal right to withhold rent when facing dangerous conditions.”