OurSpace and Kevan Halliwell

Ourspace and Kevan Halliwell

OurSpace was the brand name of a collapsed ‘virtual workspace’ scheme established by Kevan Halliwell and Jim Moore.  Jim Moore is currently serving a sentence in the USA for fraud.

OurSpace was headquartered in Dubai.  It had only two sites, one in Dubai and another in Marbella, but had raised an estimated $30m from investors around the world.

The scheme initially began with the sale of leases on the virtual workspaces at $25,000 each which came with a guaranteed rental yield of 10% per annum.  Halliwell then switched the leases into debentures “because it was better for investors”.  Whenever a company tries to switch investors from one structure to another it is almost always for its benefit and not for the benefit of the investor.  The new debentures were with a series of OurSpace companies domiciled in Malta.

Cut to the present day and all the companies have closed down.  The company which held the assets (the main leases on the sites in Dubai and Marbella) is in administration in the UK.  The Dubai lease has been cancelled by the property owner.  The Marbella site is closed and may never reopen.

OurSpace was a giant Ponzi Scheme.

In 2018 the main OurSpace company in Dubai entered into a loan agreement and borrowed £2.3m from a company in Mauritius called OurSpace TC International Ltd.  That company wants its money back.  A second company, OurSpace Ventures Ltd, obtained a personal guarantee from Kevan Halliwell for the money.

When OurSpace collapsed Kevan Halliwell fled Dubai for the UK.  OurSpace Ventures filed a claim in the UK courts against Kevan Halliwell for the £2.3m.

This is a link to a court judgement given in December 2019 to an application made by Kevan Halliwell that OurSpace Ventures cannot make its claim in the UK courts.  Halliwell asserts that the claim can only be made in a Dubai court.  It seems fair to assume from that statement that Halliwell has no intention of ever returning to Dubai.

The Judge dismissed Halliwell’s application and concluded that the claim can be heard in the UK court.

We will follow the proceedings with interest.  We helped one of our clients close down an OurSpace company in the UK so that an investigation can be undertaken into where the money went.

To read our previous article on OurSpace please click here.