A MANAGEMENT consultant who helped cover up a multi-million-pound scam — giving the impression a gas company was booming when in fact it was bust — has failed to win a cut in his sentence.

Peter William Stott, of Jumbles Beck, Turton, admitted six counts of false accounting at Liverpool Crown Court in March this year and was jailed for two years and disqualified from acting as a director of a company for five years.

James Pickup QC, representing Stott, yesterday told appeal court judges that the jail term and disqualification period was “manifestly excessive”.

But Mr Justice Walker said Stott was involved in the scam on a day-to-day basis and the sentencing judge had made the right decision.

The court heard Stott was sucked into the elaborate fraud when he took on a role as head of finance at Alta Gas Plc, then managed by Peter Bradley.

The Merseyside-based company, which traded in bottled liquid gas, boasted of multi-million pound profits, enticing investors to plough money into it, but the whole thing was in fact a cover-up, masterminded by Bradley.

He raised false invoices, invented fake customers and exaggerated sales to make the company look successful, when it had been insolvent for some time.

Stott, aged 42, only became aware that any false accounting was going on when Bradley asked to him to create false invoices in 2001. But for the next 10 months, Stott became involved in falsifying the company's books, helping the scam to grow.