- Lucien Ekamba-Elombe set up a phoenix company while bankrupt after failing to pay his council tax and hid his involvement behind an unwitting front man
- He fraudulently claimed a £30,000 Covid Bounce Back Loan he had no right to and transferred thousands to his own account
- Ekamba-Elombe also bought two properties using more than £190,000 of company money while banned as a director by a court
A Newcastle recruitment consultant has been sentenced for a string of offences including Covid fraud, flouting director disqualifications and running a phoenix company while bankrupt.
Lucien Ekamba-Elombe set up a recruitment firm under a similar name to his previous failed company while legally banned from doing so after failing to pay council tax.
He secretly ran it through an unwitting front man to hide his involvement.
The 50-year-old then fraudulently claimed a £30,000 Covid Bounce Back Loan he had no right to apply for, transferring more than £12,000 to his own account.
He also carried on running the company even after being banned as a director by a court, helping himself to more than £190,000 of company money to buy two properties.
Ekamba-Elombe, of Union Hall Road, was sentenced to 22 months in prison, suspended for two years, when he appeared at Newcastle Crown Court on Wednesday 20 May.
He was also disqualified as a company director for seven years and ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid work.
Ekamba-Elombe had previously pleaded guilty to the offences in October last year. A warrant was issued for his arrest after he failed to appear at court in February and he was apprehended in April.
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.
Ekamba-Elombe was the director of United Recruitment and Employment Limited, which went into liquidation in January 2019. He was made bankrupt in July that year following non-payment of council tax.
It is a criminal offence to act as a company director while bankrupt. However, Ekamba-Elombe ignored his bankruptcy and set up Unify Group Limited in September 2019.
Unify Group Limited continued trading under a similar name to its insolvent predecessor, breaching the Insolvency Act 1986, which bans directors from reusing a company name to evade creditors after insolvency.
Ekamba-Elombe concealed his involvement in the new company by appointing a nominee director who had no knowledge of the appointment.
In December 2020, Ekamba-Elombe fraudulently obtained a £30,000 Bounce Back Loan for Unify Group Limited.
By the end of the year, he had transferred more than £12,000 to his personal account across 16 transactions, with a further £8,000 paid to a company or individual in France with no known links to Unify Group Limited.
Ekamba-Elombe was disqualified as a company director for five years in January 2022 following investigations into this misconduct at United Recruitment and Employment Limited.
The disqualification prevented him from managing a company until 2027.
However, he again ignored the restrictions placed on him, continuing to act as director of Unify Group Limited, even using company funds to finance the purchase of two properties.
Insolvency Service investigations revealed that Ekamba-Elombe transferred more than £190,000 from the company to his personal account between June and October 2022.
Funds were then transferred to the solicitors who conducted the conveyancing.
The Insolvency Service is seeking to recover the fraudulently obtained funds under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.