Disqualified director and two accomplices sentenced to 18 years

Also at court were his accomplices Jody Firth of Wakefield and Graham Myles Schofield of Mirfield, having assisted France carry out his dishonest activities.

France pleaded guilty to four counts of fraudulently transferring property, three counts of acting as a director while bankrupt, as well as one count each for failing to disclose property to the Official Receiver or Trustee, perjury, fraudulent trading, false accounting and money laundering.

Firth pleaded guilty to helping France run a company despite being a bankrupt, while both Firth and Schofield pleaded guilty to money laundering. Firth was sentenced for five years and four months, while Graham Myles Schofield received a sentence of two years and six months. Firth was also disqualified as a company director for five years and Graham Schofield was banned from running companies for three years.

France was first disqualified from being a director of limited companies for 14 years in 2004 for his role in the mismanagement of Eric France and Son (Metals), which went into insolvency. He was then declared bankrupt in November 2008 as he was unable to pay more than £7m after the collapse of his sole-trader businesses Embassy Racing and EFS Group.

Only months before he was made bankrupt in 2008, France transferred close to £180,000 worth of money and assets out of his personal estate to avoid paying his creditors.

France’s money and assets went to Graham Myles Schofield and Jody Firth, friends he had made through motor-racing. Assets moved by France included two classic cars worth £27,000 to Graham Myles Schofield and Jody Firth, as well as a further £152,607 was transferred to bank accounts controlled by Graham Myles Schofield.

France then began running companies despite having restrictions placed on him. With Schofield, he also engineered false and misleading explanations to the Trustees and the Official Receiver about a substantial amount of possessions.

Between 2008 and 2013,  France managed and controlled JKL (Wakefield) Ltd before the company went into insolvent liquidation. The company bought and sold metals and listed Firth as the company director but not France.

France repeated the same tactic when Schofield had his name down as the official director for two racing companies effectively controlled by France. WFR Ltd and WFR Holdings Ltd ran between 2011 and 2014 before also going into liquidation.

While managing JKL (Wakefield), France diverted more than £6m from the company accounts to a combination of other business and personal accounts. Items bought  included a 5-bedroom house in Huddersfield, around £200,000 on furniture and £70,000 to buy fine wines.

And around £1.8m was also used to purchase a fleet of high-end vehicles and personalised number plates, including three Aston Martins, two Ferraris, as well as a Rolls Royce and McLaren.

France achieved the deception by falsifying company cheques, invoices and other paperwork to make it appear as if payments had been to bona fides creditors of the company, when they were made to purchase the cars and luxury goods.

After France failed to properly disclose his property to the Trustees, he was twice privately examined at Huddersfield County Court in 2012. At court, France argued that he had sold various items of jewellery, including two Rolexes and a platinum ring, as well as a number of paintings to a colleague for £250,000.