A fraud investigation into the firm blamed for the collapse of Flyglobespan has reportedly been dropped.
The Serious Fraud Office said there was “insufficient evidence” to pursue a prosecution against credit card processing company E-Clear, which went bust early last year owing an estimated £127 million, the Herald newspaper in Scotland reported.
The SFO has ended an eight-month investigation into E-Clear.
The London-based business, run and owned by Cypriot entrepreneur Elias Elia, went into administration in January 2010.
That was just a few weeks after Flyglobespan and its parent company Globespan collapsed.
Globespan’s receivers, PricewaterhouseCoopers, immediately linked the failure of the airline and the Edinburgh-based Globespan travel empire to the behaviour of E-Clear.
The London company had withheld some £25 million worth of Flyglobespan’s fares while negotiating to buy the airline.
Receivers for E-Clear later discovered debts of some £127 million and linked its business with the collapse of several other airlines, including the Scottish-owned Canadian operator Zoom.
The Herald said it understood investigators from the SFO began looking at E-Clear in May 2010. Last week they wrote to witnesses they had interviewed in connection with the company’s financial affairs and told them they had ended the probe.
An investigator was quoted as saying: “Following a review of this case, a decision has been taken to close the investigation as there is insufficient evidence to give rise to a realistic prospect of conviction.”
But it was stressed that the Insolvency Service was continuing with a separate probe into E-Clear.
An SFO spokeswoman said: “I can confirm the SFO has concluded its investigation as there is insufficient evidence to support a prosecution.”