A businessman who was jailed for running loss-making companies while bankrupt and disqualified from acting as a director has had his sentence reduced after the Court of Appeal accepted that he had been too harshly punished.
The man had repeatedly breached the disqualification which had been imposed after earlier business ventures failed, leaving creditors – primarily the Crown – about £1.5 million out of pocket. During the disqualification period, he had taken ‘almost total control’ of three companies which also ran up six-figure debts.
He was jailed for two years and three months after admitting four offences. In cutting that sentence to one year and eight months, however, the Court found that he had not been given sufficient credit for his guilty pleas. The Court ruled, “We accept that this was a serious case but we are of the view that an overall sentence of 27 months was measurably too long.”
