Alleged fraudster Achilleas Kallakis jetted staff at AIB to Mauritius, St Petersburg and a lavish two-day 40th birthday bash in Mykonos, Greece, a London court heard yesterday.

Mr Kallakis and his co-defendant Alexander Williams are accused of defrauding AIB in relation to £740 million in property loans.

The loans were allegedly obtained on the back of fake guarantees supposedly signed by executives at a leading Hong Kong estate agent Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP).

Mr Kallakis (44) yesterday told jurors how he had treated staff at the bank to the luxurious trips to thank them for “pulling out all the stops” in helping close various high-end property deals. He denied boasting of his or his family’s purported wealth to AIB or brokerage firm CLP when applying for the loans, it was said.

And Mr Kallakis said there had been no legal arrangement between his family’s Hermitage Syndicated Trust and SHKP, and added that he had never told AIB of any such arrangement.

George Carter-Stephenson QC, representing Mr Kallakis, asked whether he had claimed SHKP staff would be at his two-day 40th birthday celebration in Mykonos during September 2008 to meet AIB bosses.

“Absolutely not,” Mr Kallakis said.

“What I actually told AIB was that there would be various people from Hong Kong who had been invited to the party. That was in the context of AIB telling me that they were going to be opening an office in Hong Kong and Singapore and they wanted some contacts.”

And he insisted that the loans’ status as “non-recourse” meant that it was his family trust rather than he who was liable for them.

Mr Kallakis that there were various other forms of security in place, including the asset itself and guarantees that had been provided.

He also told of how AIB would contact him “incessantly” in the hope of arranging further loans, adding: “They had an insatiable appetite for deals, particularly the type of deals we were doing.”

“They were a relatively new bank on the block – I think their property department started in 2003. They were very, very eager to lend to good clients. We had done some excellent deals with them.”

Mr Kallakis and Mr Williams both deny conspiracy to defraud, forgery, fraud by false representation, money laundering and obtaining a money transfer by deception.

The trial continues.