Two men have been sentenced for fraudulently obtaining loans with one using a \u00a325,000 Covid Bounce Back payment to buy a property in Spain.<\/p>\n
Alex Hope and Liam Jones, who ran Hull company Virtutum Limited, which sold cannabidiol products, took out a \u00a356,000 loan from a private lender.<\/p>\n
Hope separately laundered the Covid money through a number of bank accounts and put it towards buying a \u20ac245,825 (\u00a3210,174) house in Lanzarote, the Insolvency Service said.<\/p>\n
Both men pleaded guilty to fraud charges at Hull Crown Court and were handed suspended jail terms on Monday.<\/p>\n
Hope, 41, of Elm Tree, Halsham, East Yorkshire, was given a three-year prison sentence, suspended for three years.<\/p>\n
Jones, 42, of Edinburgh Drive, Holton-le-Clay, Lincolnshire, was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for 18 months.<\/p>\n
The Insolvency Service said the pair had signed the \u00a356,000 loan agreement giving personal guarantees that no legal action was taking place against them.<\/p>\n
However, both defendants were being pursued by a specialist litigation firm for about \u00a3800,000.<\/p>\n
Mark Stephens, chief investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: “The Insolvency Service remains committed to holding those who exploit loan schemes and financial systems for personal gain to account.”<\/p>\n
A Proceeds of Crime hearing will take place later to try and recover the money, the Insolvency Service added.<\/p>\n
This headline has been updated to reflect the fact only one of the men obtained the Covid loan, and not both.<\/p>\n
Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds<\/a>, watch the latest episode of Look North<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men have been sentenced for fraudulently obtaining loans with one using a \u00a325,000 Covid Bounce Back payment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-716027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}