Elten Barker of Hadlow Down, East Sussex, received £1.5million in loans from the collapse of London Capital & Finance [LCF] last year, according to a filing from the firm’s administrators last week.
Smith & Williamson, who are tasked with tracing tens of millions that went missing after the collapse of LCF, confirmed in their filing to the High Court that they intend to sue Mr Barker for the £1.5million ‘which he received from the company for no apparent commercial purpose’.
Mr Barker was a director of a number of companies that received money from the failed bond-firm, including London Oil & Gas – the principal borrower of loans supplied by LCF.
It is also said he had ‘an interest’ in two other companies the administrators are suing over the LCF affair, London Group and LPE Enterprises.
Earlier this year, Mr Barker attempted to have Smith & Williamson removed as administrators to London Oil & Gas, which collapsed shortly after LCF did.
“It is to be inferred that Mr Barker’s purpose in pursuing the application is to vex the administrators and/or to deplete the administration estate,” the court filing claimed.
Barker says he and his fellow London Oil & Gas directors, which include former Tunbridge Wells Conservative party chair Simon Hume-Kendall – who was Chairman of the failed company – were wrongly advised to put the firm into administration, but the High Court ruled against him in January.
Separately, LCF’s administrators have issued a report to investors who have lost money, to say that loans to the four main groups LCF claimed to have lent money to do not tally with funds going into the debtor’s bank accounts.
“Clearly, we are investigating the very substantial discrepancies which this analysis has highlighted,” the report states.
It adds that it has ‘concerns’ that one of the debtors, an equestrian business where Barker’s friend Spencer Golding was patron, has sold horses without handing over the proceeds to the administrators.
The boss of FS Equestrian Services, Sean Cubitt, has failed to deliver information requested on the business, the report states.
Last year, five people were arrested after the Serious Fraud Office opened an investigation into the collapse of LCF.
Nobody has yet been charged, but SFO say the investigation is ongoing.
