Businessman Christopher Foster and family missing after ‘arson ...

Mansion 'arson attack': Missing businessman Christopher Foster risked losing 'dream home' - Telegraph

Mansion 'arson attack': Christopher Foster risked losing 'dream home'
The millionaire businessman Christopher Foster feared dead with his family after an arson attack on their country property may have been living under the threat of losing his "dream home".
By Nick Britten

Police were preparing to enter the gutted property for the first time last
night to find out whether Christopher Foster, 50, his wife Jillian, 49, and
their 15-year-old daughter, Kirstie, died in the blaze in the early hours of
Tuesday. The search is likely to last several days.

Newly released pictures show the magnificent interior of the house.

Taken before Mr Foster bought the home, they show a huge hall which led to
five bedrooms and two bathrooms spread over two upper floors.

As detectives continued to study Mr Foster's business dealings as a possible
motive for the arson, it emerged that in May this year the liquidators
appointed following the collapse of his company – Ulva Ltd – had secured an
interim charge on the family's £1.2 million home in Oswestry, Shropshire.

The charge was as a security against almost £2million of debts owed by Mr
Foster's firm. A friend of Mr Foster said he would have been "devastated"
to lose the "dream home" – Osbaston House – which he bought four
years ago. He said: "Chris loved the house and knew how much it meant
to Jill and Kirstie. He spent thousands and thousands doing it up and
invested a huge amount of his life into making it the perfect home for them.

"The idea that it could have been repossessed would have devastated him."

Ulva Ltd, which specialised in insulation for oil pipelines, owed £1million to
a supplier and £800,000 in tax.

Experts believe that the liquidators' name, Butcher Woods, was placed on the
land register of Mr Foster's property so that they would be able to
repossess the house if he did not pay off his debts.

Police have not ruled out the possibility that he may have started the fire
himself.

However, friends said he appeared relaxed and happy in the hours before the
fire, when he and his family spent Bank Holiday Monday at an all-day party
thrown by his close friend John Hughes, a local car dealer.

Guests enjoyed clay pigeon shooting and quad biking, before the Foster family
stayed on for a barbecue in the evening. A resident said: "Chris was,
as he always was, happy and enjoying himself. There was nothing to suggest
there was anything untoward and his behaviour was perfectly normal."

The barbecue finished at around 8.30pm, after which Mr Foster and his family
made the 20-minute walk home.

At around 5am the following morning locals were woken by the sound of car fuel
tanks exploding as four of Mr Foster's luxury vehicles went up in flames.

Fire crews arrived to find the property, garage and stables ablaze and three
horses and two dogs shot dead. It is believed that whoever killed the horses
and dogs did so before burning the house down because the animals are
sensitive to smoke and "would have made a hell of a racket".

Mr Foster had been involved in two court cases in recent years.

In 2006, two men were cleared of blackmail after he alleged that they had
demanded money from him following a failed land deal in Cyprus.

In May this year, he was branded untrustworthy by a judge who accused him of "asset
stripping" his failing company in order to carry on trading under
another business name.