Newcastle recruitment consultant sentenced for Covid fraud
Lucien Ekamba-Elombe, 50, of Union Hall Road, Newcastle, secretly set up a new recruitment firm after his previous business collapsed and continued to act as a director despite being disqualified.
He fraudulently claimed a £30,000 Bounce Back Loan under the Government's Covid-19 scheme and used company funds to purchase two properties worth more than £190,000.
David Snasdell, chief investigator at the Insolvency Service, said: "Lucien Ekamba-Elombe's criminal actions were calculated, persistent and wide-ranging.
"This was a prolonged and deliberate course of offending that touched almost every aspect of insolvency law.
"Ekamba-Elombe abused Covid support funds, ran a phoenix company while bankrupt and carried on as if a director ban simply did not apply to him.
"He even used company money to buy properties for himself.
"Rooting out Covid fraudsters, cracking down on abusive phoenix companies and holding disqualified directors to account are all central to the Insolvency Service's work – protecting honest businesses, creditors and the public from criminals such as Ekamba-Elombe who think the rules do not apply to them."
At Newcastle Crown Court on May 20, Ekamba-Elombe was sentenced to 22 months in prison, suspended for two years.
He was also banned from serving as a company director for seven years and ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid work.
He had pleaded guilty to the offences in October last year.
The court heard that Ekamba-Elombe was previously the director of United Recruitment and Employment Limited, which entered liquidation in January 2019.
He was made bankrupt in July that year due to unpaid council tax.
Despite his bankruptcy, he went on to establish Unify Group Limited in September 2019 and continued to operate as a director in breach of insolvency law.
The new company traded under a name similar to his previous business, in violation of the Insolvency Act 1986, which prohibits directors from reusing company names to escape liabilities following insolvency.
To conceal his involvement, Ekamba-Elombe appointed a nominee director who had no knowledge of the appointment.
In December 2020, he fraudulently applied for and received a £30,000 Bounce Back Loan for Unify Group Limited.
By the end of that year, he had transferred more than £12,000 to his personal account and a further £8,000 to a company or individual in France with no known links to Unify Group Limited.
In January 2022, Ekamba-Elombe was disqualified from acting as a director for five years due to his misconduct at United Recruitment and Employment Limited.
The ban was supposed to prevent him from managing a company until 2027, but he continued as director of Unify Group Limited regardless.
Investigators from the Insolvency Service discovered that Ekamba-Elombe had used company funds to purchase two properties.
Between June and October 2022, he transferred more than £190,000 from the company to his personal account, with the money later forwarded to solicitors acting for the property purchases.
A warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to appear in court in February. He was subsequently apprehended in April.
The Insolvency Service has confirmed that it is seeking to recover the stolen funds under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
