A husband and wife defrauded a Government agency by submitting false invoices and inventing ghost employees during a funding project, a court was told.
Andrew Rendell-Read, 61, is alleged to have extracted a profit of £260,000 from Innovate UK in a joint fraud operated with his wife and business partner, Catherine McGreggor.
Lincoln Crown Court heard the vehicle for the fraud was an engineering company of which the couple were both directors.
Matthew Moore-Taylor, prosecuting, told jurors the fraud began in April 2015 when VBC Instrument Engineering (VBC) applied to the Government agency Innovate UK for a funding project related to the automated manufacture of aerospace blades.
As part of project Innovate UK reimbursed 41 per cent of the costs incurred by the company, the court heard.
Mr Moore-Taylor said the fraud simply operated by VBC inflating the costs of the project in two ways through quarterly submissions.
“The first is false invoices,” Mr Moore-Taylor alleged. “The second was ghost employees.”
Jurors heard the ‘ghost employees’ were in fact real people in the form of McGreggor’s niece and daughter.
Mr Moore-Taylor said McGreggor’s two relatives did not benefit from the majority of the funding received from Innovate UK and were instructed to pay the money into a joint account she shared with her husband.
The fraud was discovered when an engineer who was working on the project contacted Innovate UK, the court was told.
“He was effectively a whistleblower,” Mr Moore-Taylor explained.
Mr Moore-Taylor said £809,286 was paid to VBC during the 36 months of the project and alleged £260,000 was the profit extracted by the ‘husband and wife’ directors.
The jury heard there is no dispute that a fraud took place as McGreggor has pleaded guilty to her involvement.
“The only issue is if they were partners in crime as well as they were partners in business and partners in life,” Mr Moore-Taylor said.
Rendell-Read, of Broadgate, Weston Hills, Spalding, has pleaded not guilty to two fraud offences and a third charge of possessing forged invoices.
It is alleged Mr Rendell-Read made false expenses claims relating to Innovate UK between December 3, 2015 and September 11, 2018.
Mr Rendell-Read also denies abusing his position as a director of VBC Instrument Engineering by transferring funds from business expenses between February 10, 2016 and April 18, 2019.
He also faces a third charge of possessing articles for use in fraud, namely forged invoices, between February 10, 2016 and August 11, 2018.
The jury heard Mr Rendell-Read denied being involved in the administration of the business when he was interviewed by the police.
Mr Moore-Taylor said it was the defence case that Mr Rendell-Read was left in the dark by his wife and did not get involved because of his dyslexia.
The trial is expected to last two weeks and continues at Lincoln Crown Court.
