A BUSINESSMAN “deliberately misled” inquiries into a company’s finances as part of winding up proceedings, a court heard.

John Samuel Edmunds was said to have given an investigator from the Official Receiver’s office “the run around”, in a bid to hide the financial records of JSE Transport Ltd.

Durham Crown Court heard that he received a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, with 250-hours’ unpaid work, for fraud and acting as an undischarged bankrupt, in June 2012.

Vince Ward, prosecuting, said Edmunds acted as a “shadow director” and, in the course of inquiries, he was interviewed by an investigator from the Official Receiver’s office, in June, 2010.

“Not for the first time, he had the opportunity to furnish them with his financial situation.

“But, it was not until 2016, when criminal proceedings were under way, that he finally gave up his records sufficiently for the authorities to discover the declaration made in 2010 was untrue.”

Edmunds, 50, of West Layton, near Richmond, admitted making a false statutory declaration and misconduct in the course of winding up.

Christopher Knox, mitigating, said his client’s assets were “virtually cleaned out” by way of proceeds of crime, after his last conviction.

But he added that he has since been involved in the running of a legitimate business, in local deliveries, for which he has ten employees and has won awards.

Jailing him for 16 months, Judge Simon Hickey told Edmunds: “You gave the authorities the run around.

“You gave them every assistance short of actual help and kept records away from them as long as you could, until criminal proceedings were facing you.”

”You deliberately misled the authorities, making sure they could not get hold of documents, to ascertain what assets the company had to pay the tax man or to creditors.”

Edmunds was disqualified from acting as a company director for ten years and was given a year to pay the £3,689 costs of the hearing.