Half-built home of accused tax fraudster Adam Cranston repossessed and listed for sale

An unfinished Sutherland Shire home belonging to accused tax fraudster Adam Cranston and his wife has been listed for auction.

Construction has stopped on the 936-square-metre property, which sits on the exclusive peninsula of Burraneer. It’s been left as a shell with a ground slab and half-built brick walls.

The property was bought by Mr Cranston and then-girlfriend Elizabeth Rouhliadeff in March 2015 for $1,875,000.      

Mr Cranston, son of former Australian Tax Office boss Michael Cranston, was charged last year with defrauding the ATO of $144 million, in one the largest white-collar crimes in the country’s history.

The south-Sydney property has since been repossessed by the bank and is now for sale after the Federal Police lodged a court order on the property under the proceeds of crime legislation.

Selling agent David Wolfhart, of Century 21, described the property as “very rare” and with no clear price guide.     

“It’s not typical and it’s not going to be an easy sell. We only photographed the property on Friday and we only got the contract a couple of days before that. I don’t know what valuation they’ve had,” Mr Wolfhart said.

“I’m limited in what the bank will allow me to tell people but it has to go to auction when it’s a mortgagee sale. The bank wants the money back and are very motivated to sell it,” he said.

The land is still a construction site after the former four-bedroom brick home was knocked down to make way for a two-storey dwelling with a new swimming pool and basement, which was approved in 2015.

Mr Wolfhart said the excavation work had been completed and some of the work had commenced for what was meant to be a very “substantial home” but didn’t get very far.

The land is zoned ‘E3 Environmental Management’ by Sutherland Shire, which limits the range of development because it has ‘environmental, scenic values or hazard risks’.

Two other properties, which had been owned by Adam Cranston but then transferred to a company name, were sold last year and were under the same type of court order by the Federal Police.

One was a rural property in Vacy, which sold for $1,086,000. Another was a three-bedroom house in Miranda that sold for $1.88 million.  

Adam Cranston will next appear at Sydney Downing Centre on the 13 March.

The AFP declined to comment on proceedings currently before the courts.