The businessman who founded Kent’s leading winery has been ordered to pay millions of pounds in compensation after he misled shareholders through “a series of sham transactions”. Richard Balfour-Lynn is best known in the county as the founder of the Hush Heath Winery in Staplehurst, along with his wife Leslie. But before that, he was for 18 years the chief executive of a property company called MWB Group, which at the time of the dispute in 2009 owned London’s Liberty department store in Regent Street, and the Malmaison and Hotel du Vin hotel chains. It also provided serviced office accommodat…
