Estate agent brothers are banned

A RULING banning two estate agents from selling houses after exploiting a widow has been upheld.

Brothers Claudio and Luigi Ascione, who run an agency in Woking, Surrey, encouraged their vulnerable client to sell her property at a knock-down price to a company they ran themselves.

They did this without revealing their personal interest, according to the Department for Trade and Industry. The customer, who has not been named, was anxious to sell up quickly following the death of her husband.

At the time, the brothers were working for a leading firm of estate agents. They were sacked and banned from operating in the profession.

Neither Claudio, who was then a branch manager for the agency, nor Luigi, then an area manager, told their employer about the deal. The Office of Fair Trading banned the brothers from working as estate agents after the matter came to light. A tribunal was appointed to hear the appeals against the ban in September 2004. The tribunal found that the Asciones' failure to disclose their personal interest was done knowingly, deliberately and with the intention of making a profit at the expense of a vulnerable client.

The tribunal also found the brothers, currently partners in the estate agency business Kingsleys, of Knaphill, near Woking, were unfit to practice as estate agents and recommended that they should both be prohibited from estate agency work.

Their appeal against the tribunal ruling was rejected by Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt yesterday.

The DTI says there is no connection between Kingsleys estate agents of Knaphill and Andrew Kingsley estate agents who trade in south London and Kent.