Pair guilty of £2m pension fraud

Iversen stood trial at Southwark Crown Court

A businessman and his lawyer have been convicted over a fraud which raided £2m from a Scottish company's pension fund.

Danish entrepreneur Bjorn Stiedl, 44, who was living in Surrey, was convicted last year of conspiracy to defraud.

Lawyer Carsten Iversen has now been convicted at Southwark Crown Court of taking part in the conspiracy. They will be sentenced later.

The fraud affected 200 former employees of the Balfron Group's defunct forklift truck plant in East Kilbride.

A £2.1m hole was discovered in their pension fund but, with interest, those losses have now reached £4m.

Pension fund

The two men were found guilty of a conspiracy to defraud investors in the Clarion Group Retirement and Dependants' Benefits Scheme between 1 March and 30 September, 1994.

The court heard that Stiedl's company, Crisun, bought Balfron's pension fund for £450,000 in 1994.

He used his ill-gotten gains to fund a life of luxury, as well as paying off a £400,000 mortgage.

He gave £10,000 to his secretary and gave similar gifts to relatives, while handing Iversen a £100,000 "thank you".

Found guilty

The lawyer helped him feed the money through an array of overseas bank accounts to conceal its origin.

Stiedl, of Esher, Surrey, was found guilty last November but his conviction could not be reported until after Iversen's trial.

The lawyer, of Barbican, central London, denied the charge. He claimed that he was involved in a commercial transaction and had not suspected that anything was amiss.

However, the jury unanimously convicted him of taking part in the conspiracy.