Director of failed solicitors’ loan firm sentenced

THE former finance director of solicitors’ loan firm Invaro has been sentenced to six months imprisonment, suspended for a year, for failing to keep proper records.

Terence Lindon, 55, was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court for the breach of the Companies Act 1985 at a hearing brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) at Liverpool Crown Court on Friday. He was also banned from acting as a company director for seven years.

The case follows the collapse of Liverpool-based Invaro, which provided loans to solicitors working in the personal injury market. Invaro was funded by company Chancery & Leadenhall, which was in turn was funded by investors of a Japanese pension fund. However, it went into voluntary liquidation in 2004 after trading for just over two years with losses of over £75m.

Wirral-based Mr Lindon had pleaded guilty to the offence on December 12. However, his co-defendant Giles Richard Hutchinson of Cleethorpes in North Lincolnshire was acquitted on January 31 after the SFO discontinued its prosecution.