CAMBODIA

Richard Cook’s old firm DDR went under in 2017 – three years after he resigned as a director – owing the taxman £150,000.

The company was put into liquidation owing Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs but uncovered documents suggest DDR Recycling, then run by Mr Cook’s former fellow director Donald Mccorquodale, may have $5m in a Cambodian bank account after the sale of gold nuggets from Africa. Mr Cook resigned as a director in February 2014. Ten months later, a Tanzanian company named Barax Mining invoiced DDR for the sale of 200 kilograms of gold nuggets, worth exactly $5m. In March 2015, a Cambodian bank wrote to DDR suggesting the firm had $5m on deposit in a Phnom Penh bank account. In January 2015, Mr Mccorquodale paid around $25,000 to the Cambodian ministry of economy and finance as “payment for clearance stamp duty fee”.

The barrister representing Mr Mccorquodale in Phnom Penh was a Tran Thuyen Ly. A few months later a man with the same name was detained in connection with setting up fake bank accounts in Vietnam for Nigerian scammers. It is unclear if it is the same man but DDR’S Cambodian bank account is being investigated by the liquidators.

Mr Mccorquodale said the Cambodian gold sale “was completely a waste of time. We didn’t get any goods and the whole thing was just a complete waste of time.”