Arundel accountant played '˜key role' in fraud

A disciplinary committee of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) found John Gimson guilty of two offences committed in 2009.

He has been ordered to pay £12,500 and excluded from ACCA membership.

The first allegation related to Mr Gimson assisting a man in the management of companies when he knew that man was disqualified.

The man, referred to as Mr A, is banned from acting as a company director until 2018 after being sentenced to four years in jail for fraud in 1995.

The ACCA disciplinary committee’s findings, published on March 24, also said that Mr Gimson had been found guilty of making or permitting dishonest payments to his and Mr A’s company from another company, without the director’s knowledge.

According to the findings, Mr Gimson admitted the first offence ‘for the purpose of these proceedings’.

In a letter from Mr Gimson, dated February 24, 2016 and published in the report, he said: “It is now my belief that the entire process was a means whereby Mr A would extract money from Mr D and Mrs B and Mr E and Mrs F at a greatly inflated fee in respect of the fairly modest services that he was going to provide.”

In the same statement Mr Gimson said emails shown to him that day appeared to be ‘clear evidence of Mr A becoming involved in the management of these companies’, the report said.

He added: “By doing nothing, I accept that I knowingly assisted him to be concerned in the management of these companies.”

The committee found that Mr Gimson played a ‘key role’ in a team of people Mr A had put together to allay fears potential clients would have over him being a ‘convicted fraudster who was also disqualified from being a director’.

“As a member of the ACCA, Mr Grimson added a veneer of respectability to Mr A’s team, with the complainants being very much reassured by his membership of such a respected body,” the report found. “Thus it was that Mr A was able to further his dubious schemes involving, as they appeared to, the use of a fictitious Trust purely as a vehicle for fraud.”

Mr Gimson has been excluded from the ACCA and ordered to pay a £7,500 fine and costs of £5,000.

He can appeal.

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