I believe the man in question is still extremely rich, actually. And at the time they were living in Belgravia they must have had a huge income to afford the lifestyle they were leading. Yes, he declared himself bankrupt, but that’s how very rich people hang onto their assets.
They possibly lived in Belgravia in order to look rich, but they were clearly up to their eyeballs in debt that they could not afford to serve. The point about bankruptcy is that it happens because your debts exceed your assets. Everything you own is liquidated and distributed among those to whom you owe money. There are preferred debtors so the distribution's not pro-rata - the tax man is paid first, foe example - but that's how it works. You as the bankrupt can't use lawyers and accountants to hide your assets because firstly it's criminal, and secondly, if you can afford to pay them, that money gets seized and used to pay your creditors. Insolvency practitioners exist but they don't make a living hiding bankrupts' money so they can screw over creditors. They are instructed by debtors to find all the bankrupt's money so as to pay off as much as possible.
The idea that there are somehow rich bankrupts who get away with it and remain rich is one of those urban myths, like rich people not actually paying any taxes, i.e. it's completely untrue. You're banned from being a director, from being given any kind of credit agreement, from having a bank account, and so on. You could try to trade as a sole trader but you wouldn't be able to buy stock on credit, you'd have to pay literal cash and you'd likewise have to be paid in cash because you'd have no account into which to receive cheques. If it looks like you've hidden any assets, your creditors can come after them until you're discharged, which you won't be if it looks like you're hiding assets.
The man we’re talking about is still extremely rich now, so how did he turn things around after bankruptcy if he was penniless? It’s obvious he had money stashed away…
It's not obvious at all. It's plausible he got involved in cash-only businesses after his bankruptcy. The only all-cash businesses I can think of where you get rich quickly are criminal ones, which is not a good look if his is supposed to explain how he can't have killed SJL.
I know bankrupts can’t have bank accounts for six years, so as he knew he was entering bankruptcy just days after Suzy’s disappearance, he’d hardly have wanted a cheque off her.
Not at all. He's trying to stave it off. He projects an outward impression of being rich but in fact he is just borrowed to the hilt. He is going round everyone he reckons he is owed money by shaking them down because if he doesn't pay X by the end of the week they're going to petition him for bankruptcy. His wife likes his money but she won't like a penniless loser, so he is about to lose his house (to the bank), his car, his wife and of course she'll get custody of the kid(s). He's got a week to rescue his lifestyle and this bl00dy estate agent whose project he's sunk money into is avoiding him and she needs to pay back her share.
Here was a man living in Belgravia, albeit going into receivership, while Suzy was paying a mortgage on a small top floor flat in Putney. They were worlds apart financially, and a meagre £3,000 would have been peanuts to him
He's a bankrupt living in Belgravia for about another week, at which point it becomes publicly clear that he cannot and never could afford it. They were worlds apart, yes. She was solvent and he's bankrupt. She's much better off than him - he has negative net worth. As I said above the £3,000 is nothing to do with this. We don't know what she meant by that. For all we know this bloke had been helping her conduct off-books property sales and she's got a sum of money stashed somewhere that he wants.
All that aside, who says that this man met Suzy in the PoW? He’s never been mentioned, ever. How do you you know he met Suzy there?
We don't. It's inference. There's neither motive nor opportunity for CV to have done this, however. He didn't even make the calls to the bank, some of which involved his partner or the landlord's wife. For him to have done this, he'd have had to kill her on impulse with people around, hide the body while running a pub, convince everyone else she's never turned up, dispose of her car, then act normally. He could not have done that without help.
Someone who actually did have a reason to confront her was whoever was hassling her, as she told her uncle. The only person we know of who this might have been is the guy who is involved in a business project with her who goes bankrupt within days of her disappearance. There were two calls to the pub trying to establish when she'd be getting there. The couple we know stamp instantly on any attempt to mention them. Why?
<modsnip: Rude and personalizing> There’s nothing wrong in coming up with hypothesis, but the scenario you’ve suggested - where this astute businessman has roped in naive barmen who are strangers to him
Who says he's astute? He's bankrupt. How good a businessman is he? Did he just not pay his suppliers, until it caught up with him? Any fool can do that. Who says they're strangers? He can't confront her at her office because someone's going to step in.
And the money to open a beauty shop (which is just rumours) and did it ever exist - that wouldn’t have bankrupted him if he never took the lease on, which it appears he never did.
If he owed £100k and was worth £100k, £10 would have bankrupted him. The beauty chain was well established, confirmed IIRC by PS, and money had been spent; money his bankruptcy shows he didn't have (borrowed, presumably).
I also think that CV sounded too naive and inexperienced to get himself involved in a murder - with a stranger at that.....I personally think CV is the perpetrator
Riiiiiiiiiiight....
The issue here is that almost every bit of information is undermined by other bits. There is no hypothesis of what may have happened that fits everything.