Did you give a Power of Attorney to to the Lawyer if so, depending on the wording he could well do anything on your behalf without consulting you.

What did you instruct him to do on the first contact - what sort of agreement / payment did you make with him.

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hi dave99,

We didnt instruct him to do anything. We paid £18K into his client account which we were lead to believe would stay there until we were happy with the contracts. We have not signed anything and no power of attorney given.
Therefore we thought it would just be a case of the lawyer refunding the monies from his client account.

sue

OMG - I thought you were just talking about the lawyers fee and not the deposit for the property. You poor thing I sympathise with you even more. That is terrible. An awful lot of money. I really am gobsmacked.

Did you sign ANYTHING - that could be construed as a contract for the lawyer to act on your behalf - like a "standard" agreement - if so do you have a copy in English.

Has the lawyer actually stated that he has passed on the money or not.

Has the developer told you that he has NOT received the money.

Have you got a letter from the developer accepting your cancellation.

Have you got a receipt from the lawyer for the deposit.

Do you have anything that tells you how the "client account" will be used.

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Who introduced this lawyer? Were they introduced by the Developer? Who told you that all payments must go through the lawyers account?

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PROPERTY SHOP INC. International Property Brokers
EGYPT REAL - Your One Stop Shop for Hurghada Property

I only paid my lawyers fees into his account and monies for the apartment into the agents bank account.

When we bought the company we bought from had there own lawyers department, which also help with visa'a, banking, regestering properties,renting,bill paying, well almost anything that crops up.

Hi again Dave,

No we have not signed anything at all.
The lawyer has told me that he has released the money as follows:
£14448.00 to the developer and £3612.00 to our UK agent as commission.
The developer and the agent have confirmed this. The developer have said they have got not problem refunding their part but want us to pay a canx fee of 15% (they are looking into this now as they did not know we hadnt signed anything as the lawyer told them we had signed). The UK agent is saying its down to the lawyer to refund us the money they have received as commission as its down to his negligence (which is a total joke - why should the get commission on a no deal?).
I have not got anything in writing that confirms how the client account will be used - just verbal information from the agent and the lawyer.
I have got confirmation that the money has been received by the lawyer and have also got a transaction complete confirmation from my banks International Banking Team.
I have not got anything in writing from the developer re the cancellation although they have confirmed over the phone and via email that they will refund the monies etc. The stumbling block here is they want to refund the monies to the lawyers client account - I am then worried if he will refund them to us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a mess!! Why cant the developer pay you the refund direct. Would it be worth a visit over to Egypt to try and sort it all out??

I have had no dealings with the developer until recently as everything was done through the UK agent. They told us to pay the money into the lawyers client account which (stupidly) we did. But, we thought we were safe by going through a well established well known (certainly in the north west) agent rather than dealing directly with the developer.
Sorry for the waffle - does all that make sense?