Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
A Nottinghamshire construction boss who fraudulently removed more than £700,000 from four failing companies and transferred the money to his casino account has been jailed.
Wesley Grainger-Smith fraudulently removed more than £702,050 from four struggling construction companies between 2014 and 2017 into his casino gaming account.
Grainger-Smith was not the official director of any of the companies but acted in the capacity of a director and had significant influence over their affairs. The 66-year-old claimed to have later repaid most or all of the amount with his winnings but was never entitled to gamble with company money in the first place.
Grainger-Smith, 66, was sentenced to two years and four months in prison at Lincoln Crown Court.
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.
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.
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.
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.”