One of Scotland’s richest men who fled the country after going bankrupt has been forced to return home after his Middle-Eastern dream went “bust”.
North-east businessman Calum Melville, who once featured in the Sunday Times’ Rich List, moved to Dubai to rebuild his empire, leaving a string of debts in his wake.
But now his bad fortune appears to have caught up with him in the UAE after he was forced to leave his home and office space for unpaid bills.
Since his return to the Granite City, dozens of workers and contractors have contacted The Press and Journal claiming they have fallen victim to Mr Melville’s bad business deals.
But in an exclusive interview, he said he “refused to give up”, despite having racked up more than £750,000 in debts and losses.
He claimed he planned to raise the cash to try to restart the business – OIM Energy Group DMCC – in Dubai in order to pay people back.
Speaking from his in-laws’ house in Aberdeen, he said he understood it would be difficult to convince people to trust him in the future but said “where there is a will there is a way”.
And he insisted he was “absolutely, unequivocally not crooked”.
The extent of Mr Melville’s money troubles came to light in March 2014 when he was evicted from his multimillion-pound holiday home beside Gleneagles.
A sheriff gave him 14 days to pack his bags for failing to pay back the Clydesdale Bank.
Then two years ago he was declared bankrupt when he failed to pay back the £450,000 he owed, despite numerous court orders and demands from his creditors.
But last year the former Grampian Industrialist of the Year told The Press and Journal it was all part of a bigger plan to avoid paying off more debt.
At the time he insisted he was “far from pleading poverty”, claiming he was “perfectly comfortable in Dubai” in his £3million home and driving a 2015 Bentley Continental GT Speed.
He said he was running multiple successful businesses in Dubai – including a hotel group and a nightclub – and insisted he would never return to the UK.
But in his most recent interview with The P&J he said he and his wife Susan Melville, who is the company’s main director, were “stuffed” and said the business was “bust”.
He said: “We ran out of cash. We’re stuffed. Everything is bust. We just need to start again from scratch.
“Nobody likes me because people think I owe them money, but Susan and I ploughed an absolute fortune into that business.
“Probably £350,000 of our own money. Susan has sold her Hermes handbags to pay people and her jewellery to pay people.
“I was supposed to be getting $400,000 in December from a guy in the Far East.
“He sent us all the e-mails and purchase orders only to find out that the people that the purchase orders had come from didn’t exist at all so we paid him and then he disappeared to Vietnam.”
Mr Melville said he believed people had a vendetta against him and said they had colluded to make up lies about his business deals.
He said: “Money is emotive. If you don’t pay somebody they are not going to be happy.”
Those who are owed money from the Melvilles claimed that Calum had “fled” back to Aberdeen in the middle of the night to avoid paying unpaid bills.
And the staff at OIM Energy Group claimed they were told to sell all the office furniture and computer equipment and take whatever cash they could.
Mr Melville accepted he had not paid his employees in the last few months before he left.
But he said he had only returned to Aberdeen after one of his business contacts in Dubai convinced him his passport was under arrest after a series of cheques bounced.
He said he felt he was initially unable to leave the country while his wife and children returned to the UK.
However, when he eventually discovered there were no travel restrictions in place he took the first opportunity to fly back to Scotland.
Mr Melville said his ultimate goal now was to raise the finance to try to start the business again in Dubai in the coming months to pay people back.
However, he declined to provide details of a “very significant deal” in Iran he hopes to complete.
He added: “I can’t do that (pay people back) or solve that problem with me sitting here.
“We are £300,000 in the hole. That business is stuffed. What is levelled at me is that you have taken money out and not paid people. That is not the case by any stretch of the imagination.
“We will sort out anyone who is legitimately due money.
“Do you think we get enjoyment in not paying people? It is unpleasant and uncomfortable to say we don’t have money to pay this.”
But Mr Melville insisted that the hundreds of millions of pounds he once had were not squandered on a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
When asked what happened to his money, he said issues around his former UK-based business, Cosalt, were to blame.
He said: “It is gone. Cosalt did terminal damage – that is a strong word, it did a lot of damage.”
Following a civil court case alleging fraud, Mr Melville and others had agreed to pay Cosalt’s new owners £2million in an out-of-court settlement in 2012, but said they were not admitting liability.
Mr Melville also said his reputation, caused by newspaper reports and former disgruntled employees, didn’t help him maintain the work he obtained.
Adding to his woes is his claim he was the subject of fraudulent activity from an OIM contractor which prevented him from taking a payment of $250,000 in a deal.
“I’m not negating my responsibility but that is incredibly unhelpful with a business that is struggling. One of the issues we have got is people look online and think they can con us”.
