A former Lord Mayor of Leeds, Abigail Katung, has finally lost her legal fight with the UK law enforcement agency responsible for tackling organised crime and drug trafficking after a court appeal over the seizure of her luxury home in Leeds upmarket Alwoodley district was refused.
Katung, the wife of Senator Sunday Katung, the Nigerian lawmaker representing Kaduna South Senatorial District, was the first-ever African-born Lord Mayor of Leeds.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) won a High Court battle with Abigail Katung over the rights to the house on Sandmoor Drive in Alwoodley.
The house had been previously owned by a businessman who was suspected of money laundering offences. He handed it over in 2020 as part of a deal with the NCA.
Katung, who was not aware of the accusations made against the home’s former owner, sought to appeal the judgement but this has been refused.
The court heard Katung had entered into an agreement with the previous owner to purchase the house in 2015.
She paid him about £400,000 of the contracted £1m purchase price. The remaining amount was never paid but there is no suggestion that Mrs Katung was aware of the alleged criminality of the former owner.
The case revealed, however, that the vast majority of funds used for Mrs Katung’s deposit were routed from Nigeria, where she was born, to the UK via an informal value transfer system she described as a “parallel” or “black” market.
In a judgement, the judge noted that Mrs Katung disclosed very little documentation concerning the transfers into her company’s UK bank account and that her husband, Sunday Marshall Katung, who was alleged to be the source of the monies routed to the UK, did not provide a witness statement.
According to a statement from the NCA website, the judge described these facts as “telling omissions” from her evidence from which he drew an adverse inference. He did not find Mrs Katung’s evidence to be frank and forthcoming and he was also “not satisfied she was a particularly reliable witness”.
In June 2025, the High Court found that Mrs Katung had no legitimate interest in or right to the property, which had been legally transferred to the NCA in October 2020.
Mrs Katung then sought to appeal the judgement but this was refused, with a judge stating that any appeal would have “no real prospect of success”. The NCA obtained a writ of possession in February 2026 which was enforced yesterday.
A spokesperson said officers had been in and changed the locks but did not confirm when Mrs Katung left the property.
Rob Burgess, Head of Asset Denial at the NCA, said: “The NCA uses both civil and criminal powers to investigate the provenance of assets in the UK believed to have been acquired using the proceeds of crime.
“This matter has taken a considerable amount of time to litigate – at the tax payer’s expense. Now that the NCA has gained possession of the property, it will be sold, with the proceeds being returned to the public purse.”
Meanwhile, a Leeds City Council spokesperson said: “At the time this story first emerged we were unaware of the personal civil court case between the former Lord Mayor of Leeds, Abigail Marshall Katung and the NCA until publication of the High Court judgement.
“In the light of this we conducted thorough investigations and found no connection to the council in this case.”
Marshall Katung was elected as a councillor in 2019, originally as a member of the Labour Party, and served as Lord Mayor from 2024 to 2025. She currently sits as an independent.
