Revealed: Ten cladding chiefs have banked more than £300million in the seven years since the Grenfell Tower disaster
Ten cladding chiefs have banked more than £300million in the seven years since the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Bosses of the companies that manufactured parts of the lethal flammable cladding system wrapped around the tragic building have now received a total of £302.3million, The Times reports.
Arconic, Kingspan and Saint-Gobain have fitted their products on thousands of homes that now cannot be sold, with taxpayer cash being spent on paying for them to be repaired.
Each had made claims about the fire safety status of the panels that was later revealed to have been false.
The stunning list of cladding fat cats was topped by Eugene Murtagh, the 81-year-old insulation producing magnate whose company paid only £752,000 to strip its products from its flats - while recording £763million in profits just last year.
The Irish billionaire has earnt a stunning £149.3 million in the seven years since the west London inferno, where 72 people died.
The stunning list of cladding fat cats was topped by Eugene Murtagh (pictured), the 81-year-old insulation producing magnate whose company paid only £752,000 to strip its products from its flats - while recording £763million in profits just last year
His son Gene Murtagh (pictured) has also scooped a stunning £26 million since he became CEO in 2005
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His son Gene Murtagh has also scooped a stunning £26 million since he became CEO in 2005.
This includes selling £3 million in shares just before evidence about his company's fire tests emerged at the Grenfell Inquiry - where it was alleged engineers joked 'alls we do is lie' about fire tests.
The sale helped the Murtagh family become the fifth richest family in Ireland, with a combined wealth of almost £2billion – up by £700million in one year – according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
The company denies liability for the disaster but the broadsheet reports it has paid £4 million. A legal hearing in May 2023 was told there had been a settlement of about 900 cases and a global sum of about £150 million compensation agreed.
Families stranded in flats fitted with Kingspan's K15 insulation - which it claims 'can be safely used' in 'appropriate systems' - have revealed their fury as they loose tens of thousands of pounds.
Nathan and Tara Jeans, who cannot move out of the 12-storey block where they live with their son Ernest, five, and daughter Etta, two, say they have lost £100,000 in insurance, rent and service charges.
And as they cannot sell in the dangerous building they continue to lose money on their shared-ownership flat - and they are among 700,000 people in a similar position across the country.
Nathan told The Times: 'Here they are, the heads of these companies, earning millions while paying next to nothing to fix the financial problems they caused for thousands of leaseholders. At least we're only losing money; 72 paid the ultimate price.'
Bosses of the companies that manufactured parts of the lethal flammable cladding system wrapped around the tragic building (pictured) have now received a total of £302.3million, The Times reports
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Cladding manufacturers Arconic have also recouped almost all of their legal fees from their insurers - including their contributions to the settlements.
A technical manager at the building giant told staff that poor fire test results on the product in 2010 needed to be kept 'very confidential', the public inquiry into the 2017 disaster heard.
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry heard that Arconic's cladding panels - polyethylene (PE) panels - formed the system used at the tower in North Kensington and have been blamed for the rapid spread of the fire.
They claimed their product had been used worldwide and the test results were widely available, The Times reports. They added that building safety compliance does not rest with the supplier.
But, after it was sold to a hedge fund last year, bosses reaped huge financial rewards from the company.
Tim Myers, the firm's CEO from 2020-23, received £22.3 million in shares as well as £23.9 million in pay since the disaster.
In total he, their chief financial officer Erick Asmussen and chief commercial officer Mark Vrablec received a total of nearly £65 million.
The firm told The Times that its arrangements pre-dated the sale of the company last year, but would not comment on individual pay.
The Grenfell Tower Inquiry heard that Arconic's cladding panels - polyethylene (PE) panels - formed the system used at the tower in North Kensington and have been blamed for the rapid spread of the fire (pictured)
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Celotex, which is owned by Saint-Gobain produced the panels that covered Grenfell, and released toxic gas including hydrogen cyanide when it was decimated by fire.
In 2020 Jonathan Roper, who worked as an assistant product manager for Celotex, said the firm had been 'dishonest' by 'overengineering' a cladding fire safety test to achieve a pass for its Rs5000 insulation product after a first test failure in January 2014.
But in the last seven years Saint-Gobain's CEO Pierre-André de Chalendar has been paid a stunning £11.7 million, with his successor in 2021 bagging a further £15.8 million.
The company has recouped all of its £36.5 million in legal claims and fees after the Grenfell fire from insurance - and hasn't put any money aside to pay for affected flats because it cannot reliably estimate the costs.
The company said it did not design or fit cladding systems at Grenfell, and that a system with the insulation used at Grenfell passed a fire test.
Six employees have left and controls have been tightened since its own review found 'unacceptable behaviour'.