The head of a property investment firm has been disqualified from being a director for 12 years following the discovery that he falsely claimed a £45,000 Bounce Back Loan during the Covid crisis.

Simon Gorgin applied for a £45,000 Bounce Back Loan for his company, P3 Estates Ltd, in May 2020. Gorgin was sole director of the company from its incorporation in April 2010 until it was dissolved in December 2021.

Gorgin stated on the loan application that P3 Estate’s turnover in 2019 had been £180,000. A loan of £45,000 arrived in the company’s bank account the following day.

But a month earlier, in April 2021 he had applied to dissolve the company and by July of the same year P3 Estates still owed the full amount of the loan, prompting an investigation by the Insolvency Service.

Investigators discovered that P3 Estate Ltd had never traded, and had not been trading at the time of the loan application and so had not been entitled to receive any money under the scheme. They also found that three days after the loan arrived in the company’s account, Gorgin had further breached the rules of the scheme by transferring the full £45,000 to his own bank account.

And Gorgin failed to notify the bank from which he had borrowed the money that he had applied to strike off the company – breaching a legal obligation for directors to notify creditors when dissolving their business.

Gorgin has been banned for 12 years them from directly or indirectly becoming involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company, without the permission of a court. A compensation order is being recommended to recover the money.

Peter Smith, deputy head of dissolved company investigations at the Insolvency Service, says: “Bounce Back Loans were designed to help businesses to survive the pandemic. Simon Gorgin abused the scheme and took taxpayers’ money at a time when many businesses were in genuine need … [and this lengthy ban] should stand as a warning that we will take action against directors who abuse government support schemes.”