Richard Balfour-Lynn, the property and wine mogul, has been made bankrupt after failing to pay millions of pounds in compensation to investors over a stock market scandal at the former owner of Liberty, the luxury retailer.
Balfour-Lynn, 71, said he did not “have the means to pay the high levels of compensation” ordered by the Takeover Panel last year over the “deceit and wrongdoing” it found at MWB Group, the former listed company that he ran and which failed in 2012.
Ten men, including Balfour-Lynn, were involved in “a web of sham transactions and false trails stretching across many jurisdictions”, the panel said. The aim was to disguise the fact that three MWB managers and outside investors acting together had pushed…