A former managing director jailed for a six-year fraud has now been ordered to pay more than £300,000 compensation.
Adrian Platt, of Keswick, is currently serving four years after being convicted of three offences of fraud by a jury last September.
He was jailed alongside Bernard Giam, of Navigation Wharf in Liverpool city centre, who received a 40-month sentence for the same offences.
Judge Stuart Driver, QC was told that they both had benefitted from their dishonest behaviour – which involved Platt siphoning money from his employer’s funds into business accounts held by Giam – by £323,420.
Platt, 55, of Crosthwaite Gardens, Keswick, was found to have assets totalling £1,290,645 – including bank accounts and rented properties – and he was ordered to pay £323,420 compensation.
Giam, 52, was ruled to have assets of £160,749 and the judge ordered that sum be paid in compensation to the victim, Befesa Salt Slags Ltd (BSS), based in Whitchurch.
After agreeing to the figures provided to Liverpool Crown Court by Arthur Gibson, prosecuting, Judge Driver also ordered Platt to pay £4,000 costs.
The men, neither of whom was produced in court for the Proceeds of Crime hearing, have to pay the money within three months. Platt faces two more years behind bars if the money is not paid and Giam 12 months.
During the trial Mr Gibson told the jury that Befesa Salt Slags Ltd was involved in the processing and recovery of aluminium from a waste product in the aluminium industry. The company was part of the Spanish-based umbrella company Befesa.
Platt was appointed as managing director of BSS on annual salary of just over £100,000 year in October 2002. He eventually left the company in May 2017. His successor tasked with a review to reduce costs discovered payments totalling £283,645 to three linked companies “for precisely nothing”.
The police were called in and it was found the one director and shareholder of the three companies was Giam. Mr Gibson said that in reality Giam had provided no services to Platt or BSS – “the invoices were a complete scam”.
The trial judge David Potter told Platt on sentencing, that he accepted that he had been under pressure at work but found that instead of seeking help through his employers: “You simply decided you should be financially compensated for the way in which you perceived you were treated and took to fraud to accomplish this.
“I am satisfied you, as the creator of the fraud stood to gain most by it.”
Judge Potter said the defendant had abused his position as managing director to allow the fraud to be undetected and it would have continued but for a whistleblower in the firm.
