Top Ince partner struck off over £3m fraud
10 February 2012
One of Ince & Co's top partners was struck off this week, after admitting a series of frauds that netted him £3m.

Andrew Iyer was head of Ince's Global Energy and Offshore Group. At least until last July, when RollOnFriday revealed that he'd been suspended by the firm for "financial irregularities". And they were seriously irregular: this week Iyer admitted stealing £3m from clients and his firm.

Last summer the firm said that "this will have no material effect on the firm and no clients will suffer any loss". It must be wonderful for partners to be sufficiently rich to consider £283,000 stolen from their own pockets to be immaterial. And presumably they've been able to reimburse more than £2.5m to its clients out of small change.

Iyer in happier times, with Michael Caine's daughter. Not a lot of people know that.

Iyer represented himself at the tribunal, and said that he apologised "with absolute sincerity and humility". The chairman of the tribunal said that the case was as bad a case of fraud as the tribunal had ever had to deal with. Although readers will have to wait a couple of months to read the rest of the findings, as for some reason it takes the SDT seven weeks to provide a transcript.

Iyer has, unsurprisingly, been bankrupted as a result of his actions, and faces a likely prison term when the Metropolitan Police concludes its investigation and, as seems inevitable, charges him with fraud.