TWO businessmen have been banned from being company directors after their companies collapsed with debts totalling £814,000.

Mark Lea and Andrew John Nolan defied official warnings after their first business went into voluntary liquidation and continued trading with another company with a similar name and similarly headed notepaper, said Andrew Davidson, prosecuting at York Magistrates Court.

When the second company also collapsed, Lea did not give the liquidator details of its financial affairs, despite repeated letters urging him to do so.

To this day, the man responsible for ensuring its creditors are paid does not know what assets it has.

Lea, 37, of Heworth Green, York, pleaded guilty to two offences under the Insolvency Act and was fined £6,000 with £1,931 court costs. Nolan, 49, of Nunmill Street, Scarcroft Road, York, pleaded guilty to one offence under the Insolvency Act and was fined £3,000 with £1,931.

Both men were banned from being company directors for three years.

Mr Davidson, prosecuting for the Department of Trade, said that both men were directors of Crystal Trade Windows, which went into voluntary liquidation in April 2004 owing £514,000.

In August 2003, Crystal Windows and Conservatories (York) Ltd started trading with both men as directors. It collapsed with debts of £301,000 in May 2005. Nolan left the company in December 2004.

The liquidator for the first company warned both men they could not run a company with a similar name in April 2004 and May 2005.

Neal Kutts, for Lea, said: "There was no intention for dishonesty.

"It was a business decision."

Two companies were needed to divide the retail and manufacturing sides of the business and the creation of the second had nothing to do with the liquidation of the first.

Lea had not understood that he could not use the new name, said Mr Kutts.

The court was told Lea had not wanted to be unco-operative with the liquidator, but the information he should have provided was on a computer and could not be accessed until the computer was upgraded.

He was now an employee in the same line of business with personal debts of £77,000 and rising, and a relationship on the rocks.

Mr Kutts said Lea was very sorry, and was still paying off court fines incurred when he was prosecuted for not paying VAT.

Nolan, who had no lawyer, said he was not warned about the use of the second company's name.

"I have lost my life savings in a company I should not have been involved in," he said, and insisted he had no intention to defraud anyone.