Former MGN director is charged

MICHAEL STONEY, former finance director of Mirror Group Newspapers, was charged yesterday morning by City of London police officers attached to the Serious Fraud Office with two offences of false accounting and one offence of conspiracy to defraud, making him the sixth figure to be arrested in the saga since the death of tycoon Robert Maxwell 18 months ago.

Mr Stoney, 45, who lives in Dulwich, south-east London, went to Snow Hill police station in the City yesterday morning by arrangement with the SFO and accompanied by his solicitor. He was then charged at the City of London Magistrates' Court and remanded on conditional bail, including a surety of pounds 50,000.

He will not be present in court on 19 July when his case is transferred to the Crown Court because the magistrate yesterday agreed that he could go on a four- week family holiday to Orlando, Florida, starting on 16 July.

The first charge against Mr Stoney alleged that in 1991 he conspired together with Robert Maxwell and his son Kevin to defraud MGN by obtaining a pounds 50m revolving credit facility from Bankers' Trust and using the proceeds 'for purposes other than the purposes of MGN'.

The second charge said that Mr Stoney omitted to enter the pounds 50m facility in MGN's general ledger, and the third that he omitted to mention the same facility in a group financial report.