THE managing director of an international firm was jailed yesterday over a trading cover-up.
William Dane, 65, who ran Kestrel Management International Limited from Crakehall, near Bedale, North Yorkshire, destroyed documents when the Securities and Investments Board notified him that it wanted to check his affairs.
A jury at Teesside Crown Court convicted him of four Companies Act offences after hearing that he wiped all data from the firm's computers, after downloading the information for his own use.
He also put a match to company documents, said prosecutor Andrew Stubbs.
Judge Peter Fox QC told Dane: "It was the criminal equivalent of doing acts tending or intended to pervert the course of justice."
Dane was jailed for nine months, ordered to pay £16,500 costs and disqualified from acting as a director of a UK company for six years.
Stephen Warner, defending, said Dane had suffered heavy losses at Lloyds and was in poor health after a road accident.
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