Brexit film producer ordered to pay back £327,600 after fraud conviction

Brexit: The Movie was screened before the EU referendum and the producer David Shipley (right). Photograph: Twitter/PA. - Credit: Archant

The producer of Brexit: The Movie has been ordered to pay back £327,600 after being convicted of lying to secure a £519,000 loan from a business belonging to Dragon’s Den entrepreneur James Cann.

David Shipley was jailed for three years and nine months after pleading guilty to fraud by false representation between June 12 and September 5 2014.

His pro-Brexit documentary was released a month before the 2016 referendum, and featured interviews with leading Brexiteers Nigel Farage and David Davis. The £300,000 budget for Brexit: The Movie was raised via crowdfunding.

Southwark Crown Court previously heard that Shipley edited images of his payslips and P60 to over-inflate his income in order to obtain money for a new finance firm he helped to establish.

The court heard that Shipley had set up corporate finance advisory firm Spitfire Capital Advisors Ltd with two other people, and in 2014 he contacted Resourcing Capital Ventures Ltd (RCV) for a £519,000 loan, of which £327,600 was paid into Shipley’s company.

Judge Martin Griffith said the defendant’s true income was just £19,928.

At a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing on Monday, prosecutor Gareth Munday said the agreed amount to pay back to RCV was £327,600 and that the available amount was £85.72.

Shipley appeared via video-link from Wandsworth Prison for the hearing, which lasted around five minutes.

Earlier this year Shipley was jailed for almost four years for the ‘gross dishonesty’.