If you keep up with Welsh news then you must be aware of the years-long confrontation on Ynys Môn over the plan for ‘lodges’ at Penrhos nature reserve on Holy Island.
This project was originally marketed as accommodation for workers coming to build Wylfa 2, the planned nuclear power station. But now it’s tourism, pure and simple.
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INTRODUCTION
The reason I’m dealing with it is because the site has been sold by Land & Lakes (Anglesey) Ltd to the Seventy Ninth Group Ltd. On the face of it, a straightforward commercial transaction. Here it is reported on the Seventy Ninth Group website.
But we are not being told the truth.
Let’s start with the seller, Land & Lakes. This is quite a big company, based in the Lake District, and run by Brian Kenneth Scowcroft. He seems to be the real deal, a genuine entrepreneur. Perhaps Land & Lakes has decided to move on, and may even need the money from the sale for other purposes.
A suspicion strengthened by the fact that Land & Lakes (Anglesey) Ltd took out a loan last month with posh private bank C Hoare & Co.
Which is why I see little point in spending time on Land & Lakes. Instead, I want to focus on the buyers, reported to be the Seventy Ninth Group. Which is said to be run by David Gary Webster. Helped by his sons, Jake and Curtis. And they’re based in Southport.
There are many companies under this name registered with Companies House, but none going back further than 2019. (And the older companies changed their name to Seventy Ninth.) The company with the flashy website we just looked at, the Seventy Ninth Group Ltd, was only launched in November 2024.
Though to confuse matters, there is also a 79th GRP Ltd registered with Companies House in July 2020. And despite the similar name, and the same Southport address, it is a different company.
This 79th GRP looks like an intra-group money shuffler, with no employees and the latest accounts showing Assets (debtors and cash) of £22,465,034 against Creditors of £22,465,686. With most of the latter accounted for by “amounts owed to group undertakings“.
Which may link with a deal done in Gibraltar at the end of 2023, by which (if I’m reading it right) tens of millions of Euros was made available to 79th GRP Ltd by 79th Resources Ltd, a Gibraltar-registered company formed in October 2010. (Though it might have been known by a different name.)
What I find odd is that the charge document, drawn up by T & T Management Services of 2 Irish Town, Gibraltar, says “The 79th GRP Limited being a private limited company incorporated and registered in Gibraltar (under registration number 12783409)”, but then it gives the Southport address.
That number is for the Companies House registration; if it was registered in Gibraltar it would have a different number. And if it was registered in the UK then I would expect to see a number beginning either with OC (Overseas Company), or OE (Overseas Entity).
Whatever, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised by the Gibraltar connection, because if we go back to the website we looked at earlier we find this:
And the Seventy Ninth Group Private Equity Fund makes no secret of what it does. Penrhos would appear to fit the description of “distressed asset“.
The fund is designed to capitalise on acquiring distressed and undervalued assets across various real estate sectors, including residential, commercial, and leisure, areas in which The Seventy Ninth Group has gained a global reputation as experts.
So we have companies registered in England, but working through Gibraltar and regulated in that tax haven. The Seventy Ninth Group is even listed on the Wiener Börse, and I recall reading somewhere else about the Frankfurt Exchange.
All very impressive; so how many companies are we talking about?
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THE EMPIRE
Earlier, I provided a link to a number of companies under the Seventy Ninth banner. Here it is again. But if you search the Companies house website under the name of CEO David Gary Webster, you turn up this list. Most carry the ’79th’ label, with the oldest taking us back to May 2016.
Most of these companies are carrying debts, especially the older ones, such as 79th Luxury Living Five Ltd, and many seem to be owed to Castle Trust & Management Services Ltd. Another Gibraltar entity, now down the Swannee.
It looks very much as if Castle was badly investing money after people took advice from unregulated advisers. How much of this money ended up with the Websters and their Seventy Ninth / 79th duo?
Castle Trust & Management Services was registered in the UK in February 2023. The owner is given on the filed documents as Steven Andrew Knight. And here he is again.
Elsewhere in the empire, the Seventy Ninth Global website is good for a laugh. Check out the image below. They look like a team of bouncers. What’s the message here? “Oi, let us invest your pension – or else!”
But I digress.
With the demise of Castle Trust & Management Services the Websters seem to have teamed up with Desiman 2 Ltd for more recent loans. Including a loan made just before Christmas to cover the purchase of Penrhos and a number of what I assume to be adjacent properties, all listed here with their Land Registry title numbers.
The loan was made to DJC Leisure Ltd, formed less than a year ago. DJC I assume refers to David Webster and his sons Jake and Curtis. Though I found it strange that no one is listed as ‘person with significant control’.
I would have expected to see the Websters listed there. Is it really their company?
Desiman 2 is owned by HL Investments Ltd of St Peter Port, Guernsey. I believe the ‘HL’ stands for Hargreaves Lansdown. Another company that will invest your pension or your savings.
Hargreaves Lansdown was gobbled up last year.
The Bristol-based company accepted a deal in August worth GBP5.44 billion from a consortium comprising CVC private equity funds, Nordic Capital XI Delta and Platinum Ivy B 2018 RSC Ltd, part of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
This dig into background could end here, but it doesn’t, due to a frustrating quirk of the Companies House website. By which I mean, you can search, at different times, perhaps using other combinations of a name – even the same name! – and come up with entirely different results.
Like I say, it’s very bloody frustrating.
UPDATE: To add to the confusion I have found two companies registered with Companies House where Webster Snr gives his name as ‘David Webster’.
These are: long defunct T Orange Ltd, a one-man band. And Grudge Match Management Ltd, where the other director is Kenneth Roberts, who may have mining interests.. Until February last year this company was known as 79th Group Ltd!
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BACKGROUND
As an example, I mentioned earlier that searching on the Companies House website for ‘David Gary Webster’ turned up these 23 companies.
But another search for ‘David Gary Webster’ turned up 55 more companies. A different 55 companies! All of which seem to pre-date 79th / Seventy Ninth. With appointments running from January 2001 to May 2015. And in a number of the earlier posts, Webster is listed as secretary rather than director.
What’s more, many of them seem to be local sports clubs in Formby. Maybe not surprising as in a number of these ventures Webster was teamed up with former lower leagues footballer Hugh McAuley.
The Wikipedia entry for McAuley tells us:
The company mentioned, that linked McAuley with Webster, Innovation Group (UK) Ltd, was Dissolved in 2015, and never declared any assets of note.
A fate that accounts for most of the 55 companies I turned up in the second search, the exceptions being those Webster left over a decade ago, and 79th Element Ltd. Webster senior left this outfit in October 2016 and son Jake left in January 2020.
Though Jake is still listed as the controlling interest in this company, which seems to be the first mention of ’79th’. But what does it mean? (Since publication I have been reminded that gold has the atomic number 79.)
It’s all a bit odd, don’t you think? Here we have David Webster, Merseyside footy fan who, in his early 50s relaunches himself as a big-money property and finance guy with the loot behind it all coming from, or through, offshore locales.
And it doesn’t end there, for Webster is said to have bought a gold mine in Africa.
Having built up, over 25 years, a £400 million residential and commercial property portfolio through The 79th Group, the Websters believe this is the perfect time to invest in gold and two further mine purchases are under consideration.
“Over 25 years”! But as I just said, the first mention I can find of 79th is in July 2014 with 79th Element Ltd, currently on the rocks, with the accounts well overdue, and strike-off imminent.
Though it does describe itself as being involved in “Mining and other non-ferrous metal ores”. But there’s surely a word missing after mining? Gold?
And we read earlier that Seventy Ninth now has mining concessions in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Also in Ontario, Canada. Though strictly speaking this is Seventy Ninth Resources, registered in Gibraltar (104802), but using the Southport address, and it’s a division of the bigger Seventy Ninth Group.
(You’ll recall me mention a deal between 79th GRP and 79th Resources. Is 79th Resources the same company as Seventy Ninth Resources?)
The Seventy Ninth Resources website says the actual drilling was done by SRK Exploration Services Ltd. But the only extant company with a name like that is SRK Exploration Services Nominee Company Ltd, giving a Newport, Gwent, address.
And it must be this company because one of the two nominees is William Kellaway, who we find here. And here’s the SRK report of him out in Guinea.
This is impressive stuff. If you accept it at face value. But I don’t.
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CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The Websters work for the Seventy Ninth Group. But they don’t own it. They’ve been recruited to serve as the public face for a much bigger, and more secretive, network. The office in Southport is just an accommodation address.
Turning to Penrhos, we saw the relevant titles linked with DJC Leisure Ltd, the company named after Webster father and sons.
You’ll recall me wondering earlier why the ‘person of significant control’, indicating company ownership, had been left blank. Well now I know.
I went to the Companies House filings for DJC Leisure Ltd, and checked the Certificate of Incorporation. By scrolling down I saw that all 100 shares are owned by Kitten Holdings AG of Zug, in Switzerland. Check for yourself.
Kitten Holdings was formed around the same time as DJC Leisure, and now owns Penrhos. So who owns Kitten Holdings AG?
UPDATE: When I saw the name ‘Kitten’ I was thinking pussycats. But what if it’s an individual, such as this guy. Who certainly knows about money.
The onus is now on politicians, media and others to contact the Websters and ask them who really owns Penrhos. Also ask them who’s behind the money-moving machine in which they’re just a cog.
At the end of the day, we’re talking about more foreign-owned tourism. Which Wales needs like she needs more DEI, or more Net Zero, or more pressure groups, or more envirogrifters, or more corporate greenwashers, or more . . .
After 26 years of socialism the country I love is corrupted, and decaying; attracting parasites from around the globe. And they get welcomed; by those too fucking stupid to see them for what they are, or too fucking lazy to ask a few basic questions.
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© Royston Jones 2025