Ex-Brent Walker chief faces further theft charge

GEORGE WALKER, the former chairman and chief executive of Brent Walker, is facing a further charge of theft of pounds 4.5m from the company. The theft charges against him now total more than pounds 16.5m. He is also charged with false accounting.

The extra charge, which also applies to the company's former finance director, Wilfred Aquilina, concerns the electronic transfer of money from a Brent Walker account at Barclays Bank on 8 May 1990.

Mr Walker, 63, appeared yesterday before Judge Geoffrey Rivlin at Southwark Crown Court in a preparatory hearing. Mr Aquilina, 41, appeared with him.

The provisional date for trial is 3 May 1994.

Last April Mr Walker became Britain's second biggest bankrupt with pounds 180m debts after a High Court judge accused him of taking a 'cavalier' attitude towards his creditors.

He had offered half of his disposable income, estimated at pounds 100,000 per annum, to creditors under an individual voluntary arrangement in September 1992. But no money had been repaid by last April. Consequently, a request from accountants Stoy Hayward, the supervisors of the arrangement, for it to be ended and replaced by a bankruptcy order was granted.

At the time, Sir Donald Nicholls, Vice-Chancellor, said that Mr Walker was 'not playing fair with his creditors'.