Company with £400k States loan disappears – is this Canbedone all over again?

Thursday 09 June 2016

A company that took a £400,000 loan from the Jersey Innovation Fund appears to have left the Island, and now there’s uncertainty about whether the money will be paid back.

In circumstances reminiscent of the scandal over the £200,000 given to Canbedone Films in 2011, an investigation has now been called into what’s going on.

The States’ spending watchdog has announced that it will be looking into the events, after a report on ITV broke the story last night.

Reports from the Jersey Innovation Fund show that a loan was given to “Logfiller Limited” 18 months ago to support the development of “a sophisticated computer software solution that measures user experience of application and system use”.

They said that if successful, the product would create “a significant number of full time jobs in the Island”.

Documents filed show that “Logfiller Limited” was founded on 26 June 2014, and its registered office was at Rue du Hocq in St Clement.

Press releases name Michael Colopy as co-founder and Jeremy Barker as CTO, but the company’s website redirects to a firm called Octoinsight, based in Virginia in the US, which names the same two people in the same roles.

Bailiwick Express has contacted the US company, but has not yet received a response.

Economic Development Minister Lyndon Farnham has confirmed that for the last two years the Jersey Innovation Fund has been under the Chief Minister’s department, under the remit of Assistant Chief Minister Philip Ozouf.

Public Accounts Committee chairman Andrew Lewis said that his committee – which investigates areas of States activity like the recent flights scandal and the Canbedone Films grant – would be looking into what, if anything, had gone wrong.

He said: “The Comptroller and Auditor General has just started a review into grants and loans, and we have made a request for the last 18 months of records.

“As soon as this was flagged up, we started asking questions from the Economic Development department.

“We have asked them for the information. We are investigating – it’s clearly a matter of public interest.”

The Jersey Innovation Fund was set up with £5 million worth of taxpayers’ money – the rules of the fund say applicants can only receive funding if: the total amount requested is less than £500,000; the amount requested is in sterling; and the project will be located in Jersey.

Guidance notes for applicants to the JIF say that funding will only be granted if “the application clearly demonstrates how the project will be of economic benefit to Jersey and will, in the longer term, result in the creation of jobs”.

In March 2014 the Public Accounts Committee said that they were concerned that civil servants had not learned lessons from the “Canbedone Films” story in 2011, when a £200,000 grant was handed to a film company for pre-production work that it was claimed was going to lead to the filming of a major movie in the Island.

No filming has ever taken place.

It emerged after the grant was handed over by the Economic Development Department that the man behind the scheme had convictions for theft dating back to 1993 and that he had been disqualified from being a company director – the department was unaware of the conviction at the time that they approved the grant.