A businessman is believed to have killed himself h

A businessman is believed to have killed himself hours before receiving an expected jail sentence for fraud charges.

Colin Hutchinson, a former Price Waterhouse accountant, threw himself off London Bridge shortly after midnight today (Friday).

The 41-year-old’s body was found on Lower Thames Street, which runs under the bridge on the north bank of the river.

Hutchinson, a father-of-two and married to a magistrate, was a partner in Business Process Improvements (BPI) in the late nineties and contracted to a Government sponsored project designed to breath new life into business and job prospects in London.

A top team of management consultants were brought in to run regeneration projects North of the Thames designed to give a vital new spark to inner-City communities.

Hutchinson and his ‘right hand man’ John Thompson joined partnership BPI in 1986 as a senior manager from the DSS and agreed to help falsify performance figures to illicitly boost payments to the Cleveland-based management and training consultancy, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard.

Last month, in the 13th week of a trial, Hutchinson, and Thompson, 45, dramatically changed their plea and admitted two charges of false accounting between July 1997 and March 1998.

The offences relate to pnds stlng 200,000 of fraudulent claims over the numbers recruited to embark on national vocational qualifications – part of the overall project and sponsored by European and private funds.

Three charges of conspiracy to defraud between January 1996 and August 1998 were ordered to lie on the file.

Hutchinson, originally from County Durham, of Great Titchfield Street, central London, and Thompson, of Peterborough Road, Leyton, east London, had been warned by Judge James Wadsworth, QC, custody was the most likely outcome.

Another BPI partner, Scott Brown, 38, of Rusts Lane, Alconbury, Cambs, was found not guilty on the judge’s direction of charges of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting.

Jermey Donne, prosecuting, broke the news of Hutchinson’s death.

‘I received a message shortly after 9am this morning that the defence team had been informed by City of London Police a man, believed to be Hutchinson, jumped to his death from London Bridge last night.

‘

He said a detective had gone to Poplar Mortuary in a bid to identify the body.

‘The belief it is Hutchinson is based on his passport and clothing,’ said Mr Donne.

‘But as a result of injuries suffered by the deceased, he was unable to make positive identification and there has to be fingerprint examination.

‘He thinks it is Hutchinson from his general build, clothing and hair but because of his facial injuries the officer is unable to be positive.

‘Clearly this is a very tragic turn to this case.

‘

Judge Wadsworth said: ‘If, as seems terribly likely, it is Hutchinson, I extend the court’s deepest sympathies and condolences to the family.

‘

In total, BPI were awarded rolling contracts worth pnds stlng 1.

5 million as it undertook work for the North London Training and Enterprise Council (NLTEC) – but made fraudulent claims for payment before targets were fulfilled to ease a cash flow crisis.

Mr Donne said the fraud centred on the NLTEC which administered millions of pounds of central funds, European grants, and money from the private sector.

‘They did that by making claims for payments from NLTEC which were false,’ he said.

‘False because less work than they claimed for was done, or no work was done at all, or work they completed did not fall under the conditions of the contracts under which they were operating.

‘

The barrister said an ‘integral part’ of the scam was the ‘fabrication’ of details required to support the claims.

‘This was to enable them to be paid, and secondly, to avoid detection of what they were doing.

‘

NLTEC was founded to advertise a range of Government programmes designed to improve business and employment prospects in the area through advice to firms and training of employees.

BPI had its headquarters in Billingham in North East England, and offices in Poole, Dorset, and its London home firstly in Chingford, Essex, and later Enfield.

Brown initially negotiated the work but returned to the North East, to be replaced in London by Hutchinson, who moved from Dorset.

BPI was hired to lend its expertise to the Upper Lea Valley Project – run in partnership by NLTEC and the London boroughs of Enfield and Haringey.

It was a project sponsored with pnds stlng 40 million of Government cash to be spent over seven years under the Single Regeneration Budget.

In addition BPI was employed by NLTEC to run the ‘Cricklewood Corridor’, this in conjunction with Barnet Council and with similar targets.

And, finally, BPI fulfilled contracts for NLTEC retraining schemes known as Investors In People and National Vocational Qualifications, funded with European grants and money from the private sector.

‘You can see how important this money was to, perhaps, struggling and run down Inner City areas,’ said Mr Donne.

But the Crown maintained that the consultancy falsified figures to be able to claim it had reached targets.

‘The emphasis and motivation for what they did seems to be to improve BPI’s cash flow and improve profit figures,’ he said.

‘Brown and Hutchinson were partners with direct financial gain.

Thompson was an employee – but he was no doubt in furthering his new career and keeping his bosses sweet, and justifying his quite good salary and bonuses.

‘

Mr Donne said NLTEC was persuaded to award later contracts on the apparent successful completion of earlier deals.

In late 1997 the Department of Education and Employment – one of six Government departments contributing to the single regeneration budget – began an inquiry into BPI’s performance and its payment claims as part of its responsibilities.

Investigators visited NLTEC to examine papers and asked BPI to have all its relevant documents ready for inspection.

However, he said it was clear records were ‘woefully inadequate’ and of further concern was most of the documentation available was actually created within BPI itself and there was little third party
paperwork.

‘The defendants denied any wrongdoing and blamed lax administration at NLTEC or overwork at BPI,’ said Mr Donne.

‘In other words they may have got things wrong
but they denied being dishonest.

‘

He said ‘unsurprisingly’ the growing concerns were reported to police in February 1998 and it is alleged they discovered a ‘persistent’ fraud operated from the London offices of BPI.

Mr Donne said: ‘It is not part of the prosecution case that no work was done at all.

Work was done, and no doubt to a high standard.

‘

But he said the defendants had ‘consistently exaggerated’ the true position to recoup fees.

Sentencing Thompson to 12 months jail, the judge said: ‘Accountancy arrangements between your company and NLTEC left a lot to be desired and that I think was the fault of NLTEC very much more than your firm.

‘

He said there was ‘looseness and confusion’ in the way BPI was required to account for its work.

And he told Thompson: ‘It is clear there came a time you appreciated the loose systems of accounting and auditing could be manipulated to your firm’s advantage.

‘You took part in that to obtain payments from NLTEC.

‘Your firm was at the time suffering cash flow difficulties and you helped get money your firm was not yet entitled to and may never have been entitled to.

‘

Judge Wadsworth it was a ‘deliberate and calculated’ misuse of public funds’ and a prison sentence was ‘inevitable.

‘
ends

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