Disgraced Penwortham pensioner who 'misappropriated' millions of pounds from foreign exchange clients is banned from being a company director

Two "unscrupulous" foreign exchange agents who used more than £9m from clients to pay back previous clients have been disqualified from being company directors.
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Francis Edward Tarling, 75, from Greencroft, Penwortham, Preston, and Peter John Roebuck, 65, from Berkhamsted, Buckinghamshire, both received 12-year disqualifications from directly or indirectly becoming involved, without the permission of the court, in the promotion, formation or management of a company.

Roebuck and Tarling were directors of a company called Concept Consultancy Services Limited which entered into £9.1m of loan agreements with clients between May 2011 and May 2016.

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Clients were promised that their funds would be used by a third party to conduct foreign exchange trades and that Concept Consultancy Services would make returns to the client to meet monthly interest and loan repayments.

More than £9m was misappropriatedMore than £9m was misappropriated
More than £9m was misappropriated

But the company began to struggle and in September 2017, Concept Consultancy Services entered into administration before being liquidated in August 2018.

The company’s insolvency, attracted the attention of the Insolvency Service, who discovered several instances of misconduct.

Investigators established that £9.3 million of client’s funds was paid into two of Concept Consultancy Service’s bank accounts, and at least £8.4 million was used to meet the interest and loan repayments of earlier clients.

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Further enquiries discovered that at least 15 investors who entered into loan agreements after September 2015 received no repayments from Concept Consultancy Services.

When the firm went into administration, it had no funds in its bank account and owed at least £11.2 million to 204 clients who were expecting contractual interest and loan repayments.

Rob Clarke, Chief Investigator for the Insolvency Service, said: "Our investigations proved that Roebuck and Tarling accepted millions of pounds from clients who thought their funds were going to be used for foreign exchange trades.

"However, this was nothing more than an unscrupulous scheme and unbeknownst to investors, new money coming in went straight out to service the debts owed to previous clients.

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"12 years is a significant amount of time for Roebuck and Tarling to be banned from running companies, reflecting the severity of their misconduct, and this case illustrates that directors who fail in their duties will be removed from the corporate arena."

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