Jail for businessman who carried on working

Feb 18 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

A FORMER Wirral businessman who ignored a court order disqualifying him from acting as a company director has been jailed for three months.

Clive Butt was running property company City Charm while he was banned from acting as a director of any company.

The firm, which also traded under the name PIMS – Property Investment Management Services – had offices around the country and was allegedly being run by Butt’s wife, Anne, and son, Alistair.

But, when it fell into difficulties in July, 2004, it emerged it was Butt who had been acting as the managing director.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that PIMS had debts of more than £450,000 after it collapsed.

Butt insisted he had only been the sales manager, but when an investigation was launched by the receivers, the Department of Trade and Industry and Merseyside Police, it was discovered his wife had little knowledge of the firm, and his son only worked in a single office.

Instead, the 55-year-old, now of Bournemouth Road, Poole, Dorset, was acting as managing director – hiring people, finding premises, and cutting deals.

Butt later admitted trading while disqualified.

Judge Sean Duncan insisted only a custodial sentence was appropriate, after hearing Butt had been disqualified from working as a company director for nine years after his firm, Apollo Venture, was liquidated in 1998.