A 46-year-old man has been jailed in London for fraudulently obtaining Covid-19 Bounce Back Loans and using part of the money to finance a trading operation in Ghana.
Eric Agyeman, of Mace Street, London, was admitted to fraud and money laundering charges after securing £130,000 in three separate loan applications for DOK Logistics UK Ltd, a company that never traded. Under the terms of the government’s pandemic support scheme, businesses were only entitled to a single loan.
Investigations by the Insolvency Service revealed that Agyeman fabricated company turnover figures of up to £375,000 in order to secure the loans.
In interviews, he confessed that the figures were “just something I made up.”
Agyeman was sentenced at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, 9 September, to two years and two months in prison. He was also disqualified from serving as a company director for five years.
According to investigators, Agyeman used more than £40,000 of the funds to ship goods from the UK to an associate in Ghana, who sold them and returned commission payments. Proceeds were later brought back to the UK in cash by travellers.
David Snasdell, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, condemned Agyeman’s actions, saying, “Eric Agyeman brazenly exploited a scheme designed to help struggling companies during the pandemic for his own personal gain, using the funds for a business operation in Africa. Agyeman’s admission that he simply ‘made up’ turnover figures shows a complete disregard for the taxpayer-funded support that was meant to keep legitimate businesses afloat.”
The Insolvency Service added that, despite the passing of more than five years since the start of the pandemic, it remains committed to pursuing individuals who unlawfully benefited from government Covid schemes. Officials are now seeking to recover the fraudulently obtained funds under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.