Reuben Singh was once was named by Guinness World Records as the world’s youngest self-made millionaire with an estimated personal fortune of £27.5M.

In June 1999 Stephen Byers, then trade secretary appointed him to the Department of Trade and Industry’s Competitiveness Council – a sounding board for “Britain’s youngest, brightest entrepreneurs”. He was also given a place on the DTI’s Small Business Council in May 2000. He met with Tony Blair and was invited by him onto a DTI advisory panel on small business and competitiveness. Alongside Sir Alan Sugar and Sir Richard Branson he was appointed one of the five UK ambassadors for entrepreneurship.

According to his Ecademy Profile he’s won numerous more awards and appointments.

Last week it all came to and end however as he was declared bankrupt, owing over £11M. He was branded a liar by a judge after it emerged that he failed to repay a £900,000 loan to the Bank of Scotland (BoS). The bankruptcy order, granted by Manchester County Court, came after the bank rejected his offer to pay the money back over two years.

In a statement to the court his financial affairs were laid bare, he owes his father, Sarabjit Singh, £778,813 and has fallen £12,000 behind in payments for one of his cars. He has also run up debts of about £140,000 on nine credit cards, owes the Inland Revenue £32,500 for a penalty payment and has yet to settle a HM Customs and Excise bill for £60,000. The vast majority of his £11M debt was £9M he owed to a Kuwaiti business, Badr ITK General Trading Company. The bankruptcy is being administered by the official receiver and means that Singh’s assets are frozen, he cannot obtain credit or be a director of a limited company. (See details in the Manchester Evening News, The Independent, The Times and the Manchester Evening News again).

I’d not normally write about failed entrepreneurs, as I dislike the way the British media loves to revel in peoples failures, but over the years I have followed this story with interest as I went to school with Reuben Singh and his younger brother Bobby Singh.

Now while obtaining credit fraudulently as Singh apparently did, is a crime and not something I can in any way endorse reading the statements:

Judge Michael Kershaw said Mr Singh deceived the bank to procure the loan. He accepted that Mr Singh had invented a bank account in Bermuda to help maintain the impression of immense personal wealth.

The papers then report (my emphasis in bold):

Judge Kershaw said that the former bank employee who agreed Mr Singh’s overdraft “was, I think, to some extent a victim of Mr Singh’s personality as well as Mr Singh’s lies”. The bank worker himself confessed to the court he had been influenced by the impressive press cuttings that adorned Mr Singh’s office. “We were relying on Mr Singh’s guarantee,” he admitted. “He had demonstrated throughout a statement of means that he was significantly wealthy and therefore we believed we had comfort under the guarantee.”

I have to ask why the Bank allows an employee to administer loans if they’re influenced by little more than press cuttings. As I’ve stated before with regards to Stabletable and Trunki I don’t believe the British press has sufficient understanding of business to correctly report on it. Why did they not verify that the details given on the statement of means were correct?

The whole affair doesn’t reflect well on any of the parties involved, Guinness World Records obviously didn’t properly verify his claim to be the youngest self-made millionaire, nor did The Sunday Time Rich List or Fortune. It’s no wonder the British people don’t trust the government after Singh was able to gain a position on a Government advisory panel without any prior checks. Finally it makes rather a mockery of all the business awards he and his businesses have won.

In a statement issued through his solicitor, Mr Singh said:

I am at a loss to understand why Bank of Scotland did not settle and why it more than doubled its debt with legal costs. I can only surmise that there is a personal vendetta against me.

Or just maybe having been fooled into believing his previous statement of means the bank have learnt their lesson and don’t wish to be fooled again.

So what can we learn from this? Several of the organisations named above should learn to verify the facts they are presented with rather than taking things at face value. As a society we should learn not to trust the press as they are easily fooled and don’t have sufficient expertise to comment on business issues. Entrepreneurs looking for funding should learn that the bank managers they come into contact will will rarely understand the business or the business plan they are presented with and will in the majority of cases require a personal guarantee confirming one of the business startup myths.

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