Baker Tilly refused to sign off Langbar accounts

Accountants Baker Tilly refused to sign off the accounts of Crown Corporation, a company now renamed as Langbar International, which is currently facing a £365m SFO investigation.

The mid-tier firm resigned the audit of the group last year because of its concerns with the extensive role Abraham ‘Avi’ Arad, an Argentine-born Israeli, was playing in the company, The Sunday Times reports.

Arad, a terrorism expert and former Israeli government adviser, set up the original £150m funding for Crown Corporation in 2003, arranged Langbar’s main deals and invested in the company via Jewish pensioner investment vehicle Lambert Financial.

Lambert, which manages funds for 2000 pensioners in Germany, Argentina and Israel, was held a 59% stake in Crown, believed to be the largest cash shell on AIM.

As reported in Accountancy Age, small Spanish firm Gironella Velasco replaced Baker Tilly as auditors. Chilton Taylor, a member of AIM’s advisory board, was the partner leading the Crown audit.

It is believed that Arad put forward Gironella Velasco, who signed off Langbar’s accounts shortly before the group’s shares were suspended after it emerged that Langbar could not confirm the existence of its main asset, a £365m cash deposit in Brazil.

LINK: More on Langbar