William Godley has been ordered by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to pay the £1.5m compensation to his victims, after conspiring to defraud investors in the international scheme. He was jailed in 2010 for three and a half years for the same offence.
Friday's announcement, which specified the amount the convicted fraudster would need to pay out, is the final verdict in a string of legal proceedings lasting four years, and follows on from a confiscation hearing that took place on 14 April where the court confirmed that a compensation order would be made.
Godley, who was a director of several companies within the Imperial Consolidated Group and managed the operations both in the UK and abroad, ran the scheme between 1998 to 2002, raking in £250m from around 3,000 investors.
The global fund loaned clients’ money to various UK loan companies which – despite claiming they were making money – were actually making a loss and becoming increasingly insolvent.
Investors' cash was also spent on Imperial Group’s expenses and channelled through what the SFO refer to as “extremely speculative mining interests”, which the clients knew nothing about.
“Benefitted substantially"
SFO proceeds of crime investigator, Paul Wilson, said Godley had “benefitted substantially from his criminality”.
“Despite his guilty plea, this has been an extremely protracted legal process,” he said. “But the SFO is committed to ensuring that fraudsters do not benefit from their crimes.”
Godley has been given six months to pay the money or will face a further three years imprisonment.
