THE threat of a prison sentence is hanging over a failed businessman almost six years after a hotel venture collapsed with debts of more than £2m.

Anthony Mattimoe will be sentenced next month for fraudulent trading and false accounting relating to dealings at the Park Head Hotel, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham.

It follows a failed attempt to change his pleas to not guilty at Durham Crown Court yesterday, 26 months after admitting the charges.

Following a lengthy hearing, Judge Richard Lowden rejected Mattimoe's application.

Judge Lowden adjourned sentence to allow updated probation and medical reports to be prepared on 61-year-old Mattimoe.

He granted him bail to an address at Sacred Heart Church Annexe, New South View, Chilton, County Durham, in the intervening period, but only because Mattimoe has pre-arranged medical appointments.

The court heard that the offences took place between January 1993 and November 1996.

Mattimoe and his wife, Jean, borrowed thousands of pounds from investors in the hope of making a going concern of the business at New Coundon.

Instead, much of the money was channelled into their own personal expenditure.

The case was committed to Durham Crown Court by Bishop Auckland magistrates in May 1999.

Mattimoe pleaded guilty to two charges of false accounting and one of fraudulent trading at a subsequent hearing in February 2000.

He also admitted forgery and use of a false instrument connected to a Bishop Auckland taxi business which he was involved in, during 1998.

His wife, now 59, the secretary and a director of the hotel business, received a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, after admitting four charges of failing to keep proper accounting records, at Newcastle Crown Court, in June last year.

Her husband was subsequently unable to attend court for sentence due to a depressive illness.