The funeral of millionaire Albert Gubay, who died last week, took place yesterday at St Anthony’s Church in Onchan.
A service for the 87-year-old, who died at his home in Wilmslow, Cheshire on January 5, was conducted by Monsignor John Devine at the church which Mr Gubay paid to renovate.
This was followed by a private interment and a gathering at the Mount Murray Golf Club in Santon.
Mr Gubay, whose connection with the island dates back to the early 1970s when he owned a property at Greeba, built his first fortune from the Kwik Save chain of cut price supermarkets, but was a sometimes controversial figure who divided opinion in the Isle of Man.
In 2003 a commission of inquiry looked at claimed planning irregularities at the Mount Murray development, built in the early 1990s. Developers for the scheme submitted planning permission at the time for a hotel and country club together with 175 tourist accommodation houses. An article in the Daily Telegraph of May 2003, reported developers secured planning permission along with tourism industry grants and tax reliefs but actually built 175 houses which were sold to permanent residents. After suggestions of irregularities in the planning process, the commission began its investigation in 2002.
The inquiry, headed by Nigel Macleod QC, said the project had been pushed through by covert manipulation and aggressive behaviour and it said the island’s government of the day was ‘corrupted, leaving effective control ... to the developer’. However, it said there was no evidence that Mr Gubay had acted illegally.
In autumn 2013 a major fire wrecked a bedroom block at the Mount Murray Hotel, destroying 90 hotel rooms. Function rooms, the bistro, pool, restaurant and gym opened within a fortnight but jobs were lost. One casualty was treated in hospital for minor injuries after the fire. Around 14 months later, in January 2015, the hotel and leisure club announced it would close with the loss of 30 jobs, but the golf club was to remain open.
The hotel’s managing director David Lyons cited protracted negotiations with the company’s insurer following the fire, which had forced them to agree a settlement, along with crippling energy costs.
In 2004 Mr Gubay became involved in a legal battle with island lampoonist and performance poet Roly Drower.
‘Rarely can two opponents have been so unequally matched in a libel fight,’ reported the Guardian in November of that year, adding that Mr Gubay was attempting to have ‘impoverished lampoonist Roly Drower thrown into the island’s antiquated Victoria Road jail for refusing to disclose his sources’.
The action stemmed from remarks made about Mr Gubay on a website, manxman. com. Mr Drower’s computers were seized and he was subject to a six-month gagging order preventing him from explaining what was happening.
The Peveril Motorcycle Club became a target for the tycoon’s anger in 2007 when he threatened legal action, blaming motorcycle events on the club’s land at Knock Froy for silting up his private lake, at Crogga Mill further down stream. Mr Gubay said he had offered to fund any remedial work needed.
But club chairman Michael Owen said at the time the club had done everything possible, creating drains, reed beds and a settlement pond to ensure only clear water ran into the river. He disputed whether Knock Froy was the source of all the silt in Mr Gubay’s lake.
Finally, a legal case involving a dispute with Peter Willers, who was Mr Gubay’s legal adviser up to 2009, was unresolved at the time of Mr Gubay’s death.