A martial arts expert who is serving a prison sentence for major fraud has been ordered to pay £160,749 in three months.
Bernard Giam, 52, was jailed for 40 months after a jury convicted him of three offences of fraud last September.
His accomplice, Adrian Platt, was sentenced to four years behind bars after being found guilty of the same offences, the Liverpool ECHO reports.
Judge Stuart Driver, QC was told they both benefited from their dishonest behaviour - which involved Platt siphoning £323,420 from his employer’s funds into business accounts held by Giam.
Giam, of Navigation Wharf, Liverpool, was ruled to have assets totalling £160,749 and the judge ordered that sum be paid in compensation to the victim, Befesa Salt Slags Ltd (BSS), based in Whitchurch.
Platt, 55, of Crossthwaite Gardens, Keswick, was found to have assets of £1,290,645 - including bank accounts and rented properties - and he was ordered to pay £323,420 compensation.
After agreeing to the figures provided to Liverpool Crown Court by Arthur Gibson, prosecuting, Judge Driver ordered Platt to pay £4,000 costs.
The men, neither of whom was produced in court for the Proceeds of Crime hearing, must pay the money within three months.
During the trial, Mr Gibson told the jury that Befesa Salt Slags Ltd was involved in the processing and recovery of aluminium from a waste product in the aluminium industry.
Platt was appointed as managing director of BSS on an annual salary of just over £100,000 year in October 2002. He eventually left the company in May 2017.
His successor tasked with a review to reduce costs discovered payments totalling £283,645 to three linked companies “for precisely nothing.”
The police were called in and it was found the one director and shareholder of the three companies was Giam.
Mr Gibson said that in reality Giam had provided no services to Platt or BSS - “the invoices were a complete scam.”
The trial judge David Potter told Giam on sentencing, that he was “undoubtedly a person who has helped countless others in Merseyside for many years.
He added: “You set a benchmark for personal growth and spiritual development that is admired by many and acted as an inspiration to many. You have served many communities and done much to help others charitably.
”But the jury found what you had disguised from so many for so long - that you fell into the temptation of allowing yourself to be used as a vehicle for a significant fraud for which you, in turn, received substantial financial benefit.”
The court heard that Giam had had to endure the closure of his martial arts business when the pandemic made face-to-face training impossible.
