Water Park charity's finances still shaky, meeting hears (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

The defrauded Cotswold Water Park Trust is still in a difficult financial position following the fraud by former chief Dennis Grant

2:00pm Friday 28th September 2012 in News By Ian Craig

THE defrauded Cotswold Water Park Trust is still in a difficult financial position, the organisation’s annual general meeting has heard.

At Monday’s AGM, trustee David Roberts told members that, although jailed former chief executive Dennis Grant had defrauded the society of a total of £660,792, the actual damage to the organisation was likely to be much greater.

“There’s been some headway made against the tide but there’s a long way to go yet,” he said.

He added the Trust had obtained judgements of £998,000 against Grant, as well as £31,500 against his wife, and had so far been able to recover £69,000 from insurance policies and around £9,000 from the sale of two of Grant’s cars.

He added the organisation was expecting to recover a further £75,000 from the sale of three houses owned by Grant, two Banbury and one in northern Cyprus.

However, he added: “that figure is hopefully conservative”.

Although a judgement of £762,291 had also been made against former finance director Nick Hansen, who died in September 2010, Mr Roberts said it was unlikely any of this would be recovered.

Although the Trust’s income in the past financial year was £640,000, with a total surplus of £39,000, this included a £100,000 waiver of a private loan taken out in 2010, meaning the actual surplus figure was -£61,000.