Wednesday 2nd September, 2015

Following a hearing in June, the son of a peanut tycoon and company director has been jailed for three-and-a-half years for running a fake invoice scam amounting to £38m.

Nicholas Marcou, used his 'considerable charm' to woo Barclays bank into handing him huge sums of money on the back of non-existent deals with a number of leading UK supermarkets through various factoring agreements.

Marcou took over running Abacus Trading Limited, the dried fruit and nut company from his father Dimitrios Marcou, 74, a former chairman of the British Nut Council.  

Ben Douglas-Jones, prosecuting, told Southwark Crown Court that Barclays made a net loss of £8.6m on fake invoices totalling just over £38m.

"Marcou negotiated a series of ‘factoring agreements’ with the bank in 2004 which enabled him to funnel cash into the company accounts on the basis of false invoices."

"Barclays paid out 85 per cent of the apparent invoice value when a customer was invoiced or purportedly invoiced on a credit basis."

"When a customer purportedly paid the invoice, Barclays would pay out the remaining 15 percent less any charges."

Following information provided by Atlantic Risk Management, Barclays put a halt to the scam. Abacus was put into administration by the bank in December, 2009.