Centaur Global Limited directors banned for eight years

Directors of a betting investment firm have been banned from running another company for eight years for continuing trading with an insolvent company.

Centaur Global Limited, based in Northumberland, collapsed in 2012 with debts of £2 million. At the time it had been trading as an insolvent company for two years.

The insolvency judgment has revealed the full extent of the failure and how clients were kept in the dark, although it may not be discovered where all the money went.

Centaur was founded by former Audit Commission senior manager Keith Sobey, his wife Hazel and fellow auditor Andrew Cork, in 2000 and provided the public and institutions with opportunities to invest in gambling and gaming related funds. It opened an “academy” in the City and as of January 2011 claimed it was set to handle investment funds worth £20 million and would create revenue of £2 million a year.

But the firm was placed into liquidation in January 2012, owing creditors more than £2 million. This included a large shortfall of client account funds.

The Insolvency Service has found that the company was in trouble long before the liquidation and had been losing money nearly every month since 2008. Clients’ money, supposed to be ring-fenced, was used to try to cover the problems.

In 2009 net losses were £414,598, and the company was down a further £465,817 the following year. By December 2011 the shortfall of client money was more than £1.5 million but the directors continued as if the money was protected.

Liquidators were called in on January 26th 2012 with investors owed more than £1.63 million. On top of this a complex series of loans between the company, sister entity Centaur Holdings, and directors, plus a lack of records, means there are still questions as to where money went.

The Insolvency Service investigation found that records were less than “substantive” and that there were also “inconsistent”.

A spokesman for the Serious Fraud Office said: “Last year joint liquidators  concluded a settlement in respect of a seven figure claim brought against the directors of Centaur Global.

“Details of the settlement remain confidential, but the liquidators and a legal team said they had “achieved significant recoveries for the benefit of creditors.”