Carl Cushnie, once Britain's most successful black businessman, was yesterday convicted for his part in one of the country's biggest recent accounting frauds.
By a 10-to-two majority, jurors at Southwark Crown Court found the 53-year-old entrepreneur guilty of conspiring to defraud "traders" - who lent tens of millions of pounds to Versailles, the FTSE-250 trade finance group.
However, he was cleared of a second, broader conspiracy charge, involving deception by the Versailles parent group, of banks, creditors and investors.
Cushnie, the son of an engineer, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and moved to Wembley, north-west London, aged 13. He dropped out of a maths degree at London University before becoming a computer programmer. He went on to launch a software business before founding Versailles.
