Lapdancing boss ordered £100,000 of chocolate with his firm £3m in the red

A YORKSHIRE businessman who ran a string of lapdancing clubs has been banned from being a company director - after spending £100,000 on two truckloads of Swiss chocolate when his firm was £3m in the red.

Matthew Haycox, 29, of Leeds, who ran the Wildcats chain, has been barred following an investigation by the Insolvency Service.

As well as the chocolate, Mr Haycox bought a 54,499 sports car, which has not been paid for, and ordered stock worth 490,000.

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Also banned was Nicholas Warner, 29, of Leeds, who operated Waremart stores, which went into voluntary liquidation with a deficiency of about 2.7m .

Mr Haycox was the major shareholder in Mr Warner's company, which operated in Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Vicky Bagnall, director of investigations for the Insolvency Service, said: "It is clear both of these reckless directors went about their trading activities, collaborating together.

"In the full knowledge that their businesses were heading for formal insolvency, they ordered hundreds of thousands of pounds of goods that they knew - or should have known - that they could not pay for."

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Mr Haycox, who is barred from being a company director for 12 years, ran the Provocative Group Ltd from March 2004 and had lapdancing clubs in Leeds, Wakefield, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Barnsley, Blackpool and Birmingham.

These were placed in administration on September 12, 2008.

Mr Warner, who is barred from being a director for seven years, was the boss of Saltacres Ltd, which had five stores that dealt in cheap, non-branded goods and went into creditors' voluntary liquidation on September 29, 2008.

Investigators found that in that same month the two men entered into trading transactions knowing their companies were insolvent and they could not afford to pay for goods ordered.

Haycox's company Provocative ordered two lorryloads of luxurious chocolate from a Swiss supplier and sent a cheque for 52,585 as a 50 per cent downpayment even though the company did not have the funds to pay for it at the time.

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On the day of his administration, Haycox shamelessly issued another cheque for 11,415 to pay the shipping agent in Switzerland for customs charges.

The Swiss creditor shipped out the truckloads of chocolate to a business park, where the chocolate was loaded on to another vehicle and has not been traced by the administrators.

Earlier in the same year, in April 2008, Haycox had bought a BMW Series-5 car at a cash price of 54,499 through complicated chattel mortgage financing.

The finance company was left with an unsecured loss of more than 36,000.

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