THE Official Receiver is investigating why the High Court was given inaccurate information about Jackie Leeming's activities as a publican in York.

The York widow was recently given a suspended prison sentence by a Teesside Crown Court judge after admitting deception offences, having been cleared last year of conspiring to murder her husband Geoffrey Leeming.

But she was also involved in another civil case at the High Court of Justice in London earlier this month, when a bankruptcy order was made against her.

And the Evening Press has discovered that the court was given incorrect information in a bankruptcy petition filed by solicitors acting on behalf of the Customs and Excise.

The petition stated that Mrs Leeming had lately been "trading at Fairmount, 230, Tadcaster Road, York, as a publican." The statement re-appeared in a legal notice published in a newspaper last week. The Customs and Excise told the Evening Press that the bankruptcy petition related to a £5,298 VAT debt dating back to April - July 1997, when Mrs Leeming was trading at the Fairmount Hotel.

But Mrs Leeming was running the Marcia pub in Bishopthorpe when, in July 1997, police arrested her on suspicion of conspiring to murder her husband at their Haxby home.

And York police said she had never been licensee at the Fairmount.

The hotel closed down last year and has been occupied as offices by the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine since last October.

The Evening Press understands that Mrs Leeming lived at the Fairmount as a hotel guest after leaving the Marcia, and that the bankruptcy order should, in fact, have referred to the Marcia.

A spokesman for the Official Receiver said that the legal notice published had been based upon the petition provided by solicitors acting for the Customs and Excise.

He said that, even if such information was factually inaccurate, the Official Receiver had been duty bound to publish it.

But the Receiver was now investigating to try to determine the full facts of the case.

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