Asylum King whose firm earns £4.8m A DAY from taxpayers

On a recent trip to Italy, Graham King stayed at the five-star Sina Brufani Palace in the medieval city of Perugia which is perched on a hilltop overlooking the rolling Umbrian valley. Heads of state and royalty, including the late Queen Mother, have all been guests here.

So, what's not to like?

Quite a lot in Mr King's case, who had a shopping list of complaints.

The fittings were too old, there was no coffee machine in his suite, the atmosphere was 'musty', and the bottle of mineral water in the mini-bar was overpriced at five euros and should have been complimentary anyway; nor were enough staff on duty.

'I doubt I'll stay in a Sina hotel again if this is what they think 5 stars are,' Mr King, 57, wrote sniffily in a review on TripAdvisor. His break at the Sina Brufani tells us two things about Mr King. One is that he is very rich; the other, that he has no sense of irony.

Rates for the Royal Suite – where he chose to stay – start at more than £300 a night in the off-peak season – which is no more than small change to Mr King.

His company, Clearsprings Ready Homes, is paid by the Home Office to provide supposedly short-term accommodation for asylum seekers and has a £1.7 billion turnover, it was revealed this week, which means that by the end of today his firm will have brought in another £4.8 million, and it will rake in the same amount again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, for the foreseeable future.

At a time when many businesses are struggling, more tax rises are coming down the track and the cost of living continues to bite, the 'asylum trade' is one of the few sectors of the economy that is booming.

The exponential growth of Mr King's organisation, which is on the verge of making him a billionaire, emerged in the latest set of accounts for Clearsprings.

But, and here is where his sense of irony has gone missing, the state of many of the hotels and other properties in which his outsourcing organisation houses migrants have been widely condemned, not just by asylum seekers themselves, but in official reports and in Parliament.

Bug and rodent infestations, in some cases, cramped and decrepit conditions in general, water leaking through ceilings, limited heating and electricity and a lack of drinking water are just some of the problems which have come to light.

All this was already in the public domain when Mr King, the so-called 'Asylum King', was moaning about the '1970s bathrooms' and an absence of 'complimentary' bottled water in Perugia last year.

Perugia is one of 280 cities he has visited, clocking up almost 250,000 miles in the process, according to his TripAdvisor page, often in the company of his glamorous Latvian girlfriend Lolita (yes, that is her real name) Lace, who at 39, is 18 years his junior.

His jet-set lifestyle with Ms Lace, patronising some of the world's top hotels and dining at Michelin-starred restaurants, is effectively being subsidised by the taxpayer because the vast majority of Clearsprings' revenue comes from two ten-year Home Office contracts awarded in 2019 and funded from the foreign aid budget.

Mr King, who made his debut in the Sunday Times Rich List this year with a personal fortune estimated at £750 million, is the largest individual financial beneficiary of the asylum-seeker boom.

Is there anyone, apart from those making a mint out of the system, who don't think this is fundamentally wrong?

Mr King and Ms Lace, known to her friends as 'Lolo', are believed to have been living together at a flat in London's Mayfair for several years which Mr King owns and where they are listed on the electoral roll.

He has two children – both educated at a £46,000-a-year boarding school – from his marriage to Austrian-born wife Carin, 60, who still lives at the former marital home, a listed farmhouse, set in 60 acres, in the village of Chappel in rural Essex.

His new life with 'Lolo', chronicled in colourful detail on social media, bears little resemblance to his previous existence as a married man. Ms Lace's family own a 50-acre farm in a village 25 miles outside Riga, the Latvian capital, and let out some of their land.

There, her mother Erica told how her daughter and 'the very pleasant' Mr King come to visit regularly and always ask for her homemade potato pancakes.

Her daughter was not with him for his money, she insisted, in case people got the wrong impression. 'I understand my daughter,' she explained.

'She didn't know he was going to be a millionaire. There was a mutual attraction.'

'When I told Graham I wanted grandchildren he laughed and said he already had two children. 'Take them', he said.'

The couple, she proudly announced, had properties all over the world and lead a very healthy lifestyle – all courtesy of the taxpayer, of course. Ms Lace studied tourism management at Turiba University in Riga, graduating with distinction, before joining an international hotel chain.

It was while she was working at one of the group's establishments in Spain that she met Mr King, who was one of the guests.

She was in her late 20s at the time, and he was in his late 40s.

Shortly afterwards, he shared a photograph (on TripAdvisor) of the couple riding horses bareback in the sea, with Ms Lace in a red bikini, during a holiday on the Caribbean islands of Antigua and Barbuda.

Ms Lace is now supporting Mr King in his efforts on the amateur racing driving circuit.

She is a director of a firm called Race International Ltd, founded in August 2023. Her occupation at Companies House is given as 'team director' and the nature of the business as 'maintenance and repair of motor vehicles'. Her boyfriend, it transpires, is pursuing his passion for fast cars by taking part in Porsche Sprint Challenge events around Europe for 'rookie and gentlemen drivers'.

In May, an Instagram post showed him on the podium celebrating victory in a race in the Netherlands with champagne spraying which was 'liked by' Ms Lace.

Mr King is originally from Canvey Island and his family are well known in the town, which lies off the coast of Essex on the Thames estuary. When his father, patriarch Jack King, a Conservative councillor and entrepreneur, died in 2016, the Southend Echo paid tribute to 'Mr Canvey Island'.

Mr King Snr owned, at one time or another, a car dealership, caravan park and nightclubs which attracted big stars like Shirley Bassey and Tommy Cooper. John Pring is an estate agent who worked closely with Mr King Snr and his two sons, Graham and his elder brother Jeff, back in the day.

He was involved in a property development venture with the Kings which resulted in the successful purchase of a 100-acre plot of land on Canvey Island. 'I put everything I had into the new company,' said Mr Pring, but he soon discovered that he couldn't draw a salary because he had failed to establish a shareholders' agreement (which outlines how a company should be operated) with the Kings.

He asked them if they could pay him for running the project, but they declined – as they were legally entitled to do – so, having run up personal debt to invest in the deal, Mr Pring let them buy him out. As such, there is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Mr King. 'It's a sore subject but I was naive,' admits Mr Pring. 'I didn't protect myself. I blame myself and nobody else. That's why I am still working at 78.'

The venture involving John Pring became a development of static homes for the over-50s and remained in the family until a few years ago. Older sister Linda, a retired hairdresser who ran her own salon on Canvey Island for more than 20 years, lives in one of them. 'My brothers are both rich,' she told us.

'I'm the poor one but they look after me. They are very generous.'

Clearsprings was established on the eve of the new millennium. Like father, like son? Initially, having set up the company, it looked that way, but Graham King did not end up building a holiday park. He had bigger plans.

Tony Blair and his New Labour government had begun dispersing asylum seekers around Britain and outsourcing accommodation to private firms. One of the initial contracts was awarded to Clearsprings in March 2000.

Almost before the ink had dried on the paperwork Mr King was pictured in a Sunday newspaper leaving his office under the headline: 'The King of Asylum Slums' who, it was reported, 'often does business from his mobile phone in the back of a stretch limo'.

The negative headlines and soaring profits have continued in tandem to this day.

Of the 1,500 complaints the Home Office received about the state of asylum hotels last year, the majority (901) were linked to Clearsprings Ready Homes, according to data obtained via freedom of information laws.

The revelation coincided with a protest in London by more than 70 asylum seekers, including children, who slept on the street because they had allegedly been told by Clearsprings that they would have to share single rooms – some without beds – between four people.

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On its website, Clearsprings says its 'vision' is 'to be the leading provider of specialist outsourced accommodation and support services to Government, organisations and communities across the UK by providing outstanding value to our customers', adding 'our team on the ground works closely with all our stakeholders in a way that is sensitive to community cohesion issues and guided by provable sustainable and ethical trading policy'.

When the issues raised in this article were put to Clearsprings, they thanked us for our inquiry but said they 'would not comment'.

A Home Office source said: 'We inherited a backlog from the Tory government that was running into hundreds of thousands. Rather than trying to clear this and get people out of hotels, they spent £700 million on gimmicks such as Rwanda that failed to do anything.' In other words, it will continue to be business as usual for Graham King.

In Mayfair, we caught up with Lolita Lace who was leaving her flat. Asked if Mr King was at home, she replied, with a hint of a smile: 'No, I don't know him,' before walking off in the direction of Bond Street, the home of exclusive shopping in London.

Earlier this year, Prospect Magazine, a current affairs periodical, published an investigation into Graham King, suggesting Clearsprings 'accounted for more than one in every £20 spent by the Home Office – that's including on police, fire and the other services'.

Surely, there can't be a more damning indictment of an official system that inadvertently subsidises Mr King – and Lolita's – jet-set lifestyle.

• Additional reporting by Tim Stewart