Money removed from contracting firms before they went under
A Nottinghamshire construction boss who siphoned more than £700,000 from four failing companies and transferred the cash to his casino account has been jailed.
Wesley Grainger-Smith, 66, was sentenced to two years and four months in prison at Lincoln Crown Court last week.
Grainger-Smith, of Winthorpe, had previously pleaded guilty to five counts of fraudulently removing company property at an earlier hearing.
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The Insolvency Service also discovered around £570,000 in cash deposits paid back to the companies, which investigators believe may correlate with Grainger-Smith’s claim that he paid most of the money back through his gambling winnings.
Mark Stephens, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: “Wesley Grainger-Smith removed vast sums of money from failing companies to fund his gambling at casinos.
“He cannot have thought he was entitled to recklessly gamble with company money, or that he was acting in the best interests of the four companies where he said he acted as a consultant.
“Directors, or those acting as directors such as Grainger-Smith, will continue to be prosecuted by the Insolvency Service if they deliberately and fraudulently put money out of the reach of creditors.”
Grainger-Smith’s offending took place between 2014 and 2017 when he acted in the role of director of four companies: Eagleport Ltd, Smiths Constructions Ltd, Smiths Construction Services Ltd and Smiths Construction Specialists Ltd
Grainger-Smith said that while he was not the director of any of the companies, he was able to exert influence over the official directors and withdraw the money with their knowledge.
Between April 2014 and May 2015, Grainger-Smith removed £230,810 from Eagleport’s account.
A winding-up order was made against the company one month later in June 2015.
Grainger-Smith then removed £110,250 from Smiths Constructions between April and November 2015, with the company entering liquidation in December of that year.
In the five months from February to July 2016, Grainger-Smith fraudulently transferred £84,600 from the bank account of Smiths Construction Services.
A liquidator was appointed for Smiths Construction Services in September of that year.
Grainger-Smith’s final fraudulent removal of company funds came between August 2016 and February 2017, when he withdrew £276,390 from the account of Smiths Construction Specialists.
Smiths Construction Specialists, as with the other three companies, soon stopped trading after the removal of the funds, with winding-up proceedings beginning in June 2017.
In total, Grainger-Smith fraudulently removed £702,050 from the four companies, with the funds going into his casino gaming account.
Grainger-Smith was declared bankrupt in March 2017 and was banned as a company director for five years in July of that year as a result of his misconduct at Eagleport.
He was disqualified for a further 10 years in June 2019 for his misconduct at Smiths Construction Specialists.
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