INVESTIGATIONS into company fraud in the North-East total more than £250m, it has been revealed.

The extent of business crime will be highlighted at a seminar to be held in the region next month to make managers and workers more aware of it.

The seminar comes weeks after a lengthy fraud investigation in County Durham led to the conviction of businesswoman Mary Blair for stealing more than £800,000 from her employers, and only months after a nationwide operation by Cleveland Police and the Serious Fraud Office led to the arrest of seven people thought to be involved in a multi-million pound fraud.

The investigation, which has been running for more than two years, surrounds the collapse of the Mea Corporation, Mea Projects Limited, formerly known as Rotrax Engineering, and Brightchance, formerly C J Bartley.

The companies went into liquidation in 2001 owing substantial sums to creditors.

Rotrax Engineering, in Middlesbrough, owed some of the largest sums.

Detectives from Durham, Cleveland and Northumbria will take part in the seminar, staged by the North-East Fraud Forum and hosted by Tyneside legal firm Dickinson Dees.

They will offer practical solutions to directors and employees to help them stamp out the crime. Detective Inspector Phil Butler, of Northumbria Police's economic crime unit, said: "Obviously, £250m is a staggering figure and that is why we established the North-East Fraud Forum.

"We realised fraud and financial crime posed such a significant threat to the North-East economy and we wanted to bring the public and private sector together to protect the integrity of the economy and help its regeneration."

Two weeks ago, 54-year-old Blair, of Summerhouse Grove, Darlington, was jailed for five years for her "persistent, deliberate dishonesty committed over a protracted period of time".

She admitted stealing £819,200 from PMB Motors, later taken over by South Cleveland Garages, in Darlington, between July 1997 and June 2002.

The money is believed to have been used to prop up her ailing wedding dress firm, Manhattan House, which had shops in Newcastle and Darlington.

Blair's nephew, Christopher Grimes, 25, whom she persuaded to launder £683,481, was jailed for 15 months.

His father and Blair's brother, Edward, 48, who laundered cheques worth £28,950, was given 200 hours community service.