A Newcastle Court heard how Morris faced a “financial nightmare” amid the demise of the property market, when the Bank of Ireland began to call in debts of over £2.6 million, following a BBC Panorama documentary about him.
Mr Morris signed statements declaring that he held no assets anywhere in the world despite being the holder of six Swiss bank accounts.
A bankruptcy trustee eventually learned that, in May 2008, Morris had transferred £727,979 into a Credit Suisse account from re-mortgaging his main house in Leeds.
This account also had £561,901 paid into it from the sale of another property. In February 2009 Morris deposited eight gold bars. At the time they were each worth US$31,000.
Morris had previously served as Chairman of Leeds United Football club in 2004 after a consortium of new owners took over the club.
He tabled a £10 million bid to buy the side and articulated plans to build a new 50,000-seater stadium as part of a £400 million “world-class leisure venue”, only to be beaten by the club’s long-serving chairman Ken Bates.
Before he turned 30, Morris had made his fortune through B2L properties worth £69 million, ranking sixth in the Sunday Times’ Young Rich List in 2007.
Less than a year later, however, his company went into administration with £50 million of debt and he was declared bankrupt in 2009.
During sentencing, Judge Bryan Forster, QC, said:
“It is clear to me that what you have done in this case is to try and hold on to as much as you could, probably for the purpose of trying to maintain a reasonable lifestyle for your family and, I suspect, in the hope that you would be able to start up a business in the future.”
Morris’ 20 month sentence has been suspended for two years. He was also placed on an electronically monitored curfew between the hours of 8.30pm and 5am, for four months, and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.
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