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The former finance chief of Yellow Pages has been charged with a multi-million-pound fraud.
According to claims made by former shareholders in the business directory, Tony Bates let his fingers do the walking to conceal the ‘true financial position’ of the firm ‘with a view to gain for himself’.
As a result, a London court was told, the Stock Exchange was ‘furnished with false information’, and the company collapsed soon after.
The aggrieved shareholders lost everything, but they say it was no accident that Bates, 68, and his fellow executives shared a bumper £6.5 million payout in the year of the company’s failure.
That was almost double the directors’ earnings a year earlier.
Tony Bates, the former finance chief of Yellow Pages has been charged with a multi-million-pound fraud. Pictured outside court
Before the internet, fat annual editions of the Yellow Pages phone book were the original ‘search engine’ for consumers (stock photo)
Bates yesterday denied all ten counts of fraud in the first hearing of the case at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court.
Unusually, it is a private prosecution launched by former shareholders in Yell, the company which published Yellow Pages.
They are bringing the case themselves after the police, Serious Fraud Office, Financial Conduct Authority and Insolvency Service declined to do so.
In court on Thursday, chartered accountant Bates, wearing a blue suit, initially sat alongside his barrister Stuart Biggs before district judge Denis Brennan told him to move into the dock.
Speaking on behalf of the accountant, Mr Biggs said he would be making an application to have the case thrown out, arguing the private prosecutors found no evidence of fraud.
But Judge Brennan referred the case on to Reading Crown Court for its next hearing, in October. Bates, who owns a £4 million house mortgage-free in Islington, north London, was given unconditional bail in the approach to the hearing.
Mr Biggs had told the judge his client committed no offence, saying: ‘This is a criticism of Mr Bates in his role as chief financial officer of a group of companies that went through a restructuring.’
Bates yesterday denied all ten counts of fraud in the first hearing of the case at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court (pictured)
A US court held a hearing on similar claims in 2021, but the judge ruled any such prosecution should be mounted in Britain. The former shareholders mounting the prosecution have yet to hire a lawyer, and were represented in court by one of their number, James Westhead.
Before the internet, fat annual editions of the Yellow Pages phone book were the original ‘search engine’ for consumers. Adverts famously urged customers to ‘let their fingers do the walking’ to find the business they needed.
But the company behind it, Yell, changed its name to Hibu in 2012 and then collapsed into administration, reporting a £2 billion loss.