City traders jailed for £315m Balli Group fraud, but where is the money?????
06/04/2023
The X3 executives at a London commodities trader, Balli Group, where a Tory peer was a director, are jailed following a £315 million bank fraud.
The Serious Fraud Office found that the company had forged documents to obtain bank financing for at least ten months before Lord Lamont of Lerwick, resignation.
Balli Group
- The group’s main business was Balli Steel, based in Mayfair, which acted as a middleman in arranging sales from suppliers to customers.
- Its trading was unprofitable at the start of 2012, and the company was using “delaying tactics and lies” when banks asked why their loans were not repaid, the court was told.
JAILED
- Alaghband, 62, from Hampstead, north London, was jailed at Southwark crown court for six years and six months, having admitted fraudulent trading. He was banned from being a company director for 12 years.
- Erda, 56, was jailed for three years and ten months after being found guilty of six counts of conspiracy to defraud relating to more than £100 million of bank loans.
- Worsell, 68, of Gillingham, Kent, was jailed for three years and two months after being found guilty of four counts of conspiracy to defraud relating to more than £75 million of loans.
NOT JAILED
- The prosecution of Alaghband’s brother, Vahid, 71, who was chairman of Balli Group, on charges of fraudulent trading and conspiracy to defraud was halted because he was unwell.
- David Spriddell, the former finance director of Balli Steel, was found not guilty of fraudulent trading.
DUCKED A BULLET
- Lord Lamont of Lerwick, the former chancellor, resigned as a non-executive director of Balli Group three days before the board called in accountants to try to rescue the business.
- There is no suggestion that he was aware of the fraud and was not involved in the court case.
Source
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